


The Hardest of Hearts

by Allora_Gale



Series: The Hardest of Hearts [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, At least for Bucky, Bad Decisions, Bitterness, Civil War Team Iron Man, Comic Book Science, F/M, Female Tony Stark, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, It doesn't really work out like she thought she wanted it to, Nazis, Or at least she's trying, Past Implied Non-Con, Post-Civil War (Marvel), Time Travel, attempted revenge, the opposite of slow burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2019-11-05 17:55:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 38,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17923589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allora_Gale/pseuds/Allora_Gale
Summary: Toni wasn't exactly doing what anyone would have called 'well' after the so-called civil war, when her life had seemingly collapsed all around her and left her with nothing but a broken Rhodey and a heart full of fury. Drunkenly using a time-machine doesn't exactly improve that situation.





	1. A Miscalculation

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome. This is my first post in this fandom. This work is actually complete and should be updated weekly, as I'm already working on the sequel. I hope you enjoy.

There were some things to be said for unmitigated rage. Actually, there were probably a lot of things to be said about it, but none of them were coming to mind at the moment, except that trying to drown it out with enough alcohol to knock out an elephant probably wasn’t recommended. But that was her: forever not recommended. 

Toni patted haphazardly around her only to find that she was laying on the ground. The cold damp ground. With the smell of moldy wet newspapers and sewage clogging up her nose. She groaned and dropped her head onto her arm. Fuck. She hadn’t passed out on the street since her days at MIT. 

She felt awful. Thankfully, now that she had regained consciousness and at least a modicum of sobriety, she was able to reinstate the Extremis protocols she had overridden the night before, so that the virus could burn off the rest of the alcohol in her system. She’d be right as rain in no time. 

Suck on that, Steve Rogers. Fucker couldn’t even enjoy getting drunk anymore. Just one more way that she was better than him. She could enjoy both the intoxicating effect of liquor and skip out on the hangover afterward. Yay.

She laid still for a handful of minutes as she let the Extremis burn through her, raising her temperature by only a single degree. Yup. There was no chance of her going kaboom with her version of the virus. 

Someone shifted nearby her and she tensed.

“Friday?” She croaked, alerting her AI to get ready for combat and call in additional suits should the situation demand it. She got an error message back.

“No, Miss. It’s Tuesday. Are you injured?” A voice asked from a little to her right. She creaked open an eye, staring down the middle-aged man that was standing a few feet away from her. 

He was wearing suspenders. 

She blinked and stared at the offending fashion articles for a moment. Jesus, were they really coming back into style? She hoped not. She couldn’t stand them. She remembered Howard wearing them when she was a child. They always reminded her of Howard. 

“Miss?” The man prompted again when she didn’t answer, reaching out for her shoulder. 

She jerked back away from him, avoiding his touch with a deftness that had been honed by a lifetime’s worth of unwanted touches. “I’m fine.” She grumbled, pushing herself up so that she was seated. 

Almost immediately, the man’s heavy woolen coat was draped around her shoulders, making her realise she was only dressed in her booty shorts and a loose tank top and that it was clearly cold enough outside to see her breath. Not that she could really feel the cold too much with Extremis running through her veins.

“You’re not fine.” The man responded sadly and god only knew what the man thought had happened to her but he looked to be halfway between grief and anger. “Up you get, girl. Come inside before you catch your death. We’ll get you properly dressed at the very least.” 

She let the man help her to her feet, if only because she was starting to realise that there was something wrong with the situation. That sense of wrong was compounded when two classic cars passed by the end of the alley she was sprawled in. But maybe there was a car show nearby?

She let the man help her toward a drafty tenement building, even though he was the one that walked with a cane and a limp, watching her surroundings wide-eyed. Jesus Christ, it was like a museum exhibit. Some of the bricks on the building’s exterior were crumbling and the upper levels of the street were obscured by a myriad of clothes lines. The stairs creaked ominously as he led her up to the third floor and into an apartment. The single pane windows rattled when the man closed the door. 

She stared at the suite, at the coal burning stove in the corner of the apartment, and had to use Extremis to tamp down on the immediate symptoms of an oncoming panic attack. What the fuck? Where the fuck was she?

She took a deep breath as the man immediately moved to the sofa and pulled off a threadbare quilt that had been resting on the arm, wrapping it around her shoulders over the coat. Her fingers clamped desperately onto the soft fabric. She tried to make contact with Friday again but to no avail. 

The panic rose a little higher as she tried to remember what the fuck had happened last night. What was the last thing she remembered? She’d been visiting the Compound with Rhodey, helping him test out the latest version of his leg braces, and that god damned courier had shown up with a letter from Steve fucking Rogers, who had basically just unrepentantly doubled down on everything he’d done to her in the ‘civil war’ (no capitals because even she wasn’t that dramatic).

That had been where the rage had come from. Rhodey had been with her for a while, indulging her in drunkenly cussing out the stupid man who was nothing more than a propaganda relic of their war-time past. Then Rhodey had passed out without the help of Extremis to burn off the alcohol and she’d gone down to her lab and gotten increasingly more depressed. 

She remembered at one point wondering what she might change if she could go back and change anything to not end up with her whole world collapsed all around her. Would she be a better friend to Pepper, so that her CEO wouldn’t have had to decide to take a step back from her, unable to deal with the day to day drama that came with being part of the Toni Stark Show? 

Would she have managed to catch Rhodey before he hit the ground? Would she ever have let that fight take place in the first place? She sure as fuck wouldn’t have brought Spider-Man into it again, not knowing the pressure that it had placed on Peter and the reckless way he’d later gone about trying to live up to what he thought were her expectations. 

Would she have even bothered with Steve Rogers and the Avengers to begin with? She’d tried to imagine her life without them, without these traitors that she had thought were friends - damn near family to her - spending her money, using her resources and selfishly putting her down and lying to her face for years.

“Charlie? You’re back early. Did you forget something?” A woman called from another room, jerking Toni back to the present. Past? Oh god, had she drunkenly build a time machine?

A moment later an equally vintage looking woman was bustling into the room, a straw broom and dustpan in hand. “Oh, hello. Who’s this?” 

“Ah, Maggie, dear. I found her outside.” The man, Charles apparently, said quickly before turning to Toni and gesturing at the other woman. “This is my wife, Maggie. Mags, can you see to her for me please. I’m going to be late if I don’t leave now.” 

“Of course, dear.” The woman said with a soft smile. “I’ll see you for dinner.” 

And just like that, the man was sweeping out of the apartment, leaving her alone with a stranger. Not that the man was any less of a stranger to her, but still. Not that she was worried, really. She was Toni Stark and the Iron Queen armour now lived beneath her skin. She could pilot it even without Friday’s assistance. 

“Now, what has happened to you, dear?” The woman said kindly.

“I’m not sure.” She answered. It was technically true, even if the growing feeling of anxiety in her chest suggested that she might have some suspicions. 

The woman’s expression maybe became a little more sad, but there was no suspicion, which was just bizarre to her. What kind of people just invited strangers into their home? Did they have no worries about their own safety? Charles had left his wife alone with a strange woman he’d picked up off the street. 

“What’s your name then?” Maggie asked. 

“Toni.” She answered automatically, deciding not to drop the Stark name just to be safe. Maybe it would mean nothing here. But maybe it would still mean money and she’d been kidnapped enough times in her life to know better than to make it that easy for her enemies. 

The woman gave her an assessing and faintly disapproving look. “A man’s name?” 

Toni grimaced. “It’s short for Antonia.” 

A moment of silence settled between them. “Um . . . where am I, exactly?” 

“Brooklyn.” The woman answered and Toni wasn’t quite able to stop the way her nose scrunched up in disgust automatically. Brooklyn had never been her scene. This was where  _ Steve _ was from with his ‘just a boy from Brooklyn’ routine that made her want to gag. “Where are you from, Toni?” 

She wondered how she should answer that. If she had done something monumentally stupid and had actually managed to time travel, how hard would it be to verify her identity? Should she say she was from Manhattan, then go there and have no one know her and nowhere to go? That seemed foolish. If she was trapped somewhere in the past, it would be best to stay away from what was familiar to her. 

“Malibu.” She answered. “In California.” 

The woman’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re a long way from home, honey.” 

She couldn’t help the bitter laugh that escaped her throat. “Yeah, tell me about it.” 

“Let’s get you looked at. I assume there is a reason why you’re wrapped in blankets and my husband’s coat.” 

“I seem to be somewhat underdressed.” She admit. 

“Oh, honey.” The woman said sympathetically, pulling her into an abrupt hug. “Everything is going to be okay, Toni. I promise. I’m going to take care of you.” 

Her eyes watered with unshed tears before she could managed to get Extremis to put a lid on it, and Maggie just hugged her tighter. She couldn’t help it. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d been comforted like this. Rhodey was great at deflecting her breakdowns and Pepper had always managed to step back and regain a professional veneer, even when they’d been friends. No, the last person who had taken her in their arms and comforted her was probably her mom, before she was ruthlessly murdered, choked to death by Bucky fucking Barnes.

Maggie managed to shuffle them into the bathroom and began running a bath as she fussed over the state of Toni’s hair (extremely knotted and loose, hanging down her back like a wild child) and whether or not she needed the first aid kit. Toni tried to reassure her that she was fine, but all of that effort was instantly voided when Maggie managed to coax her out of Charles’ coat. 

“Oh my gosh, you poor thing.” Maggie breathed, almost instantly bursting into tears and dragging Toni back into a comforting hug. “You’re going to be okay. It’s over now. I promise.” 

Toni blinked, trying to look at the woman that was practically mauling her to figure out what she meant by that when she caught sight of herself in the mirror over the sink. Right. That’s why. When Vision and Dr. Cho had pumped her full of Extremis to save her life after the shit show in Siberia, she’d fought the virus from taking away her scars. They were  _ hers _ . She had earned every last one of them and she wasn’t about to let them go and the lessons they had taught her. It was bad enough that Extremis had smoothed all of her wrinkles and darkened her grey hairs, leaving her looking like she was back in her twenties, but she wasn’t going to let go of the reminders she bore of the trials she’d faced. 

Which left her here, looking like a girl barely out of her teens with a litany of scars covering practically every part of her body but her face. To all appearances, she was a young, confused, heavily scarred, half-naked woman from the other side of the country that Charles had pulled in off the street. They probably thought she’d been kidnapped and abused before being discarded. 

She shivered slightly at the thought and hugged Maggie back. She waited another moment for Maggie to calm down before the woman ushered her to the tub and tested the water temperature before helping her to strip out of the rest of her clothes and sink into the water. The bath was blissfully warm, which she hadn’t really thought about but when exactly had water heaters become a thing in New York? God, how far back in time was she, if she actually even was back in time and not currently experiencing some kind of delusion? Maybe she’d drank herself into a coma.

“I’ll find you some proper clothes, sweetheart.” Maggie said softly, then excused herself and closed the door to the bathroom, trapping the steam in. 

Toni sank up to her nose in the water and let her hair spread out in the water around her. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a bath as opposed to a quick shower under high-pressure shower heads that she’d designed herself. She’d practically been pressure washing herself clean for years, having little time to deal with such minutiae. Baths had been off the table entirely, especially after Afghanistan. She would much rather not risk a panic attack every time she tried to clean herself.  

But here she was in a strange place that screamed vintage, taking a bath like she was still a child, and while the anxiety was there, lurking in the background, everything was weird enough that it was keeping her from sinking beneath it. Maybe it was just Charles and Maggie. Maybe they were hipsters doing some kind of social experiment. She prayed that was true. Maybe they just didn’t recognize her as Toni Stark because of the changes Extremis had made. She  _ had _ been trying to hide the changes in her appearance whenever she’d gone out in public. She’d even been using makeup to help herself look older, which she was pretty sure was the opposite of its intended use. 

She sighed and reached for the bar of soap next to the tub, scrubbing it against her skin before washing her hair. What was she doing here? What was she supposed to do? 

Well, first she needed to figure out where she was. If she was actually in the past, it meant she’d built a time machine. If she’d done it once, she could do it again and get back to her own time. It might take her a while as literally  _ nothing _ was coming to mind, but it was still evidently possible. But  _ should _ she even go back? Back to where her whole life was crumbling into ruins around her?

What exactly was waiting for her there? The company? They had made contingency plans to ensure the stability of the business in the case of her demise shortly after she’d gotten back from Afghanistan. They would carry on without her with Pepper at the helm. She had enough projects and blueprints saved to her servers to keep SI happy for a few years. By then they would have found someone else smart enough to fill her shoes, maybe even Peter or Harley. 

What else might there be? The Avengers were in ruins. They would be better off disbanding the group entirely, but no one would do that. If anything, Toni had always understood the value of branding. It was the Avengers brand that was valuable, not any of the members. Most of them were in exile, wanted on charges of international terrorism. It was just her, Rhodey and Vision left and she had no desire to rebuild or bring the original members back. 

She laughed, but it came out sounding more like a sob. Really? Was that all her life had going for it? Was there anything in her life she actually valued? Rhodey. There was only Rhodey, but he would arguably be better off without her anyway. If it weren’t for her, he’d still be able to walk. If she’d been less stubborn, if she’d allowed her own beliefs be subsumed by Rogers for the sake of Avengers unity, would Rhodey have followed her lead? 

Of course he wouldn’t have. He was a soldier. He worked for the Air Force. He was used to being held accountable for his actions. Responsibility was written down into his very DNA. If she’d sided with Rogers, she knew deep down she’d have been facing off against Rhodey at that fucking airport. And that was just unacceptable. After that disaster of a birthday party when she’d tried to break ties with him before she died, she had sworn that she would never ever fight against Rhodey again. 

She would argue with him until she was blue in the face but fighting him? Especially in the suit? No. Never. So she was always destined to side against Rogers. She was always destined to lose. Because Rogers was Rogers. He was a stubborn son of a bitch and he’d always disliked her because she wasn’t some demure ‘40s  _ dame _ and had dared to have opinions and a sex life, which was just rich considering he’d fallen for Aunt Peggy, who may not have been loose, but oh boy did she have opinions to spare.

But yes. Rogers was stubborn and in no universe did he ever listen to her. Even when they’d gotten over their first impressions, he’d always disdained of her and she didn’t have it in her to play Natasha’s game of acting sweet and demure just to massage his idea of his superior masculinity. 

A knock at the door drew her out of her dark thoughts and a moment later Maggie was peeking in with a bundle of clothes in her arms. She set them out next to the sink and pulled out a towel from the cabinet. 

“You’re going to prune up if you stay in there much longer.” She said softly, eyes filled with pity and compassion for this poor wounded girl that they’d picked up off the street. Not for Toni fucking Stark, the head of Stark Industries and the indomitable hero known as the Iron Queen. 

“Thank you, Maggie. Thank you for everything.” She said softly because it was rare in her life to encounter such kindness. She had grown up in the eyes of the people. There was never a moment in her life that people didn’t  _ know _ her and judge her and most often find her wanting or exploitable. She hadn’t experienced this level of genuine kindness since the first time she’d met Rhodey’s mom and been welcomed with open arms. 

“None of that, dear. We have to look out for each other. These days more than others, I reckon.” Maggie said softly. “I’ll let you dress now. I’ve got some breakfast waiting for you when you come out.” 

She nodded silently and waited for the door to close before pulling the plug on the tub and getting out to wrap herself in the towel. Like the quilt before, it was threadbare and barely absorbent enough to do its job, but she ignored it and began putting on the clothes instead. Just because she was born into a life of luxury, didn’t mean she needed it in her life. She’d been in plenty enough survival situations to know that she could made do with practically nothing.

She stared at the bra and panties that had been left for her, debating whether it would be worse to go commando than to wear someone else’s underwear. While dithering about it, she glanced at the outfit that had been selected for her and decided that she would just have to suck it up. It was clear that Charles and Maggie didn’t have much. It was a miracle they were willing to share with her at all. 

She ignored the stockings entirely. There were some things that even she wasn’t willing to suffer.

The outfit that Maggie had selected for her was a dress (of course it was) with a collar up to her throat and a skirt falling to just below her knees. It was a sea foam green colour with silver buttons running in a straight line down the front of it. The fit of it reminded her of her uniform from boarding school, which was probably the last time she’d worn a skirt lower than her knees.

She found a comb laid out on the counter and used it to pull through most of the tangles in her hair and quickly braided it before realizing that she had nothing to tie it with. She held the end of the braid between her fingers as she stepped out of the bathroom, searching down a short hallway to find the kitchen. 

“Maggie, do you happen to have anything to tie this with?” She asked quietly in the doorway, not wanting to startle the woman as she was currently pulling a pot off of the stove. 

Maggie glanced over at her, then smiled brightly to see her dressed. “Of course, dear. Come with me, I’ve got just the thing.” 

She was led into a bedroom adjacent to the bathroom and Maggie set to work searching through an old vanity table. A moment later, she emerged with a handful of satin ribbons and a triumphant “Ah ha! I knew I still had these. I used to wear these in my hair when I was just a girl. Which one do you like the most?” 

Tony stared at the ribbons and couldn’t actually fathom holding on to something so simple for so long. But perhaps they had a sentimental value. If they did, there was no way that Tony could take one of them. She opened her mouth to protest, but Maggie was already holding them up next to her face, testing them against her complexion and outfit. 

“This one I think, don’t you? It matches the silver of the buttons on your dress.” Maggie said after a moment, holding up a grey one.

“Okay.” She said softly, unable to put a damper on the woman’s mood when it was clear that she was enjoying dressing her up.

“Excellent.” Maggie said, tying the ribbon in a perfect bow around the end of her braid. Toni let her hair drop, her braid reaching all the way to her lower back. She wondered if she should cut it. She’d only grown it out so long to spite Steve when he’d made a comment about it getting in the way during combat. “There. Now don’t you just look stunning.” 

Toni smiled at the compliment. Usually whenever someone complimented her on her looks she would only roll her eyes and try to tamp down the feeling of disdain that rose up in her. Then again, most people who complimented her looks were either looking to pick her up, or worked for a magazine which would then go on to drag up whatever her latest scandal was. But Maggie said it like her mother once had after brushing out her curls and placing a quick kiss on her nose with a gentle  _ “why Antonia, you look like an angel, bambina.”, _ which had always made her giggle and blush.

It was strange being treated this way by a woman that looked to be about the same age as her. She knew that Extremis had messed up her appearances, but it had been decades since anyone had tried to act motherly toward her. She wasn’t sure if she should be warmed by the thoughtless affection or offended by being treated like a child.

Maggie must be a mother, she decided. 

“Come now. Let’s get some breakfast in you now. You must be starving.” 

Toni was led back to the kitchen, where she was made to sit at the table as the woman served her a bowl of oatmeal with a sparse sprinkle of raisins and cinnamon on top. Toni dug in without protest. She had never been a picky eater. She always had preferences, but there were very few things that she refused to eat, as evidenced by the months she’d spent sucking green sludge out of a cup to counter the effects of the palladium poisoning. 

Maggie puttered around in the kitchen, washing the dishes and scrubbing down the counters, softly humming a tune to herself while she worked. Toni didn’t recognise the song, but she spied a newspaper sitting on the end of the counter. 

“Do you mind if I read the paper?” She asked. She didn’t want to be rude, but she needed to figure out where she was and what was going on. She couldn’t make any further plans until she was fully aware of her situation.

“Of course, Antonia. Make yourself at home.” Maggie said, distracted by a spot on the counter that she was attempting to rub through. 

She snatched the paper and her gaze immediately skipped the headlines and drifted to the top right corner where the date was displayed. November 4th, 1943. Fuck. She’d actually done it. 

Her gaze drifted to the headline and she suddenly felt nauseous.  **_A True Hero! Captain America rescues hundreds of POWs in Italy_ ** . 

She just couldn’t get a break, could she? She couldn’t get away from Steve fucking Rogers even when she managed to build a time machine. Was Rogers destined to haunt her for her entire life? Jesus, she much preferred when he was just a ghost that she could never live up to. He couldn’t go back into the ice fast enough. 

She flipped past the propaganda article without even looking at it and instead focussed on an article about changes to the rationing system and which goods were being added for rationing. Fuck. They were even rationing coffee. Maybe the future wasn’t so bad after all. Her life might have been falling apart there but at least she’d had coffee. 

She read through a few more articles, getting a better read on the political climate (she definitely wasn’t going to be telling anyone she was half Italian) but folded it up immediately when Maggie sat down across from her at the table, hands folded neatly in front of her. 

The other woman had an expression of concern on her face. “Antonia . . . Toni . . . is there anyone we should contact about you? Your family must be worried sick.” 

Toni froze and found her hand shaking. “No.” She answered quickly. “They’re gone. They were . . . “ She trailed off and licked her lips nervously. “They were murdered.” 

How many months had she had to come to terms with that, but she still had a hard time saying it. It still didn’t seem quite real. She’d blamed her father for decades only to find out that it had been an assassination plotted out by HYDRA all along. 

“Oh, you poor child.” Maggie exclaimed, a hand fluttering around her mouth. “I’m so sorry to bring it up. You’ve suffered so much for someone so young. You can stay here as long as you need. I don’t want you to worry.” 

“Oh, I couldn’t, Maggie. I wouldn’t want to be a burden on you and Charles. You’ve already been so kind to me and I can’t even repay you. I have no money.” She protested immediately. 

Maggie gave her a strange look that turned almost immediately sad. “You’re no burden. I would be pleased to have you here. My daughter . . . she’s overseas now. She wanted to serve, so she’s over there on the front. She’s a nurse you see. And this place has felt so empty since she left that sometimes if drives me nearly mad. So, see Toni, you’d actually be doing me a favour.” 

Toni hesitated again. She couldn’t  _ stay _ here. But she did need somewhere to crash as she got her bearings and figured out what she was going to do next. She needed to build another time machine. She needed to go back to her own time. Or maybe she could find a way to go to a time where there was no Steve Rogers to haunt her footsteps. That could be fun. 

“Okay.” She agreed quietly. “But just until I figure out what to do with myself.” 

“Of course, dear.” Maggie agrees easily. “You can stay as long as you like.” 


	2. Goal Setting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Toni decides how she's going to move forward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the warm response to the first chapter. I hope you continue to enjoy this story. :)

The answer of what she should do with herself came to her almost a week later. She’d spent that week trying to find work, listening to rumours and trying to come up with viable blueprints of a time machine to get her back to her time. Thanks to Extremis, she could build her blueprints in her mind just as easily as she’d ever built them with a hologram or on drafting paper, but so far nothing was even remotely viable. 

She was stuck and stressed and the combination was clearly not good for her because she woke up screaming from a nightmare that featured Bucky Barnes squeezing the life out of her throat just like he’d done to her mother. Suddenly the answer was so clear: maybe she couldn't get back to get own time, not yet, but while she was here she could at least make sure her parents didn’t suffer the same fate again. The solution was easy, an eye for an eye and all that. He’d murder her parents, so she’d take him out first. 

She needed to get to Italy. He wouldn’t be far from his precious Captain America.

Maggie knocked on her door and peeked inside. She’d obviously woken the couple up with her nightmare, if not the entire tenement building. Usually she would feel embarrassed about her nightmares, no one else had dealt with them well and all she’d ever been able to see them as was a manifestation of her weaknesses, but Maggie didn’t reprimand her for being so loud or even ask her if she was okay or wanted to talk about it. Instead, the woman simply settled on the bed next to her and pulled her into a hug, holding her until she fell back asleep. 

She was alone again when she awoke, but the bed beside her was still warm and she could hear Maggie puttering around in the kitchen, getting breakfast ready for Charles. Toni laid in bed for a few more minutes, watching the early morning sunlight creep across the wall as she thought about the decision she’d made last night while coming out of the throes of her nightmare. 

What did it sound like in the light of day? Crazy? Was killing Bucky Barnes before he killed her parents and countless other innocents crazy? 

She thought it over, weighed the pros and cons, and wondered about the morality of it. But she’d been castigated as a villain all of her adult life, even when she was actively superheroing, and she had plenty of ‘innocent’ blood on her hands already so what was one more? What was one more death on her conscience if it saved hundreds more?

She thought about Ultron, at the way that Steve fucking Rogers didn’t seem to be able to comprehend the purpose of a preemptive strike if only because it was a tactic that HYDRA had tried to use with Project Insight. She thought about his stupid face telling her that innocent people always died when you tried to stop a war before it started, as if innocent people didn’t die in the war anyway. 

Then she thought about what Steve Rogers’ stupid face would look like when she blew Bucky Barnes sky high and felt the decision settle in her chest. No one who had ever known her would ever say that she wasn’t vindictive. Everyone knew that you did not cross Toni Stark if you knew what was best for you. 

Steve Rogers had never known what was best for hi, and Bucky Barnes was going to be turned into a monster. It would be better to put him out of his misery early, before they could scramble his brain and turn him into a murderbot. 

So yes, even in the light of day it looked like the path she wanted to take. 

She spent the rest of the day planning. She debated practically endlessly whether or not she should sign up with some branch of the military that deigned to hire women in this barbaric age, or not. It would be the most legit way of getting to Europe since she was pretty sure there weren’t many tourists heading east across the Atlantic. It would establish a cover story for her and she had plenty of skills that they could exploit. It would provide her with money, which was something she had only a handful of from working odd jobs the past week. 

Literally a handful of. Like a handful of change. Quarters. Nickels. Pennies. Honestly she’d lost more money in her couch than she currently possessed. She had to remind herself that the cost of living was much different than she was used to. She also had to remind herself that she’d been obscenely rich in the future and therefore needed to adjust to poverty or invent something amazing and get rich. 

Or . . . and this was the better idea, she could take her suit and fly to Germany, rob some Nazi blind, burn down his house and then head to Italy to find Bucky Barnes and put an end to his miserable existence. That was much more her speed. And no one needed to feel bad about robbing Nazis, considering that most of their wealth was stolen. 

In her other life, she would have left that very moment. She would maybe have told Rhodey about it once she was already past the point of no return, and she might have informed Pepper if she was going to end up missing too many of her obligations for SI. But this was not that life, and Maggie and Charles had been so good to her that she couldn’t just up and leave like nothing more than a bad memory. 

For one thing, she was almost certain that they would look for her. It was an almost bizarre but refreshing change from Howard, who had left her to free herself when she’d gotten kidnapped as a child. She’d done it, of course, but it had forever cemented in her mind just how little her father valued her and how ineffective her mother’s protests were. 

She laughed bitterly. It was so stupid. Howard had wasted his entire life searching for Rogers, he’d sunk millions of dollars into expeditions to the arctic to search for the super soldier. But when his own flesh and blood daughter went missing, he couldn’t be bothered to even look. It brought up dark, ugly thoughts about herself that she’d harboured since she was a child and she forced herself to push them away and get out of bed. 

She dressed quickly and met her hosts for breakfast, taking over the cooking for Maggie when she went to collect the newspaper. It had become their morning routine as they both danced around the kitchen and tried to stay out of each other’s way. Charles, more often than not, watched their antics with amusement from the kitchen table as he rolled his morning cigarette. 

Once they were all seated and breakfast was served, Toni steepled her fingers in front of her and bit her lip anxiously. Was it strange that this was more nerve wracking than she’d thought it would be? After all, she barely knew these people. Their opinions should mean less than nothing to her, and yet, that wasn’t the case at all. 

“I’ve been thinking about going overseas.” She said after a moment. “Well, it’s more than that. I’ve decided to go.” 

Both Maggie and Charles paused and shared a look before continuing with their breakfast. Maggie was the first one to speak. “Are you sure, honey? After everything you’ve been through you deserve some time to rest and be safe.” 

She said that, but Toni hadn’t given Maggie any excuses or stories about how she’d wound up passed out in the alley behind their tenement. They were working off of pure conjecture and the presence of her nightmares to come up with something that was no doubt horrifying.

“I’m sure. I can’t just linger like this. I have more to offer.” She said, hinting that she would be going there with some purpose other than the murder of one specific soldier. She was lying through her teeth. Maybe she would help out with the war after she was done with Barnes, but more likely she would focus on how to get back to her own time. 

Charles frowned grimly. “What are your plans?” 

She glanced down at her breakfast and began lying with practiced ease. “They need translators. I speak six languages. I ship out in two days bound for London.” 

In actuality she spoke nine languages, but some were more useful than others in this scenario and she was uncomfortably aware of her perceived age. Nine languages for a girl barely in her twenties was pushing the limits of believability. Probably she was pushing it already.

“So soon?” Maggie flustered. 

“I’m afraid so.” She answered. “I just wanted to let you know, so you know where I’ve gone. I can’t thank you enough for opening your home to me and helping me out. You’ve fed me and clothed me and I’m forever grateful for that.”

“I told you to think nothing of it, dear.” Maggie said softly. 

In the end, they easily let her go. As well they should. She wasn’t their daughter after all. She was just some stray they’d picked up off the street. They’d bathed and clothed and fed her for a while, but she was still a stray and they had probably always expected her to leave. 

Still, Maggie made sure to accompany her to the port on the day she was supposed to be shipping out. Which was equally as touching as it was annoying. Her own mother hadn’t even seen her off when she’d left for boarding school or MIT. Instead it had been Jarvis both times. 

She pushed the sour thoughts from her mind and focussed on the here and now. Maggie fussed over her, making sure she had enough warm clothes and some pocket money and extracting a promise that Toni would write them once she arrived. With luck she would already be back in her own time by the time the ship landed, but providing that she wasn’t, she dutifully wrote down their address on a slip of paper and tucked it into her luggage. 

She finally bade the woman goodbye before slipping into the crowd. There was in fact a ship heading for England leaving that day, so she slipped between uniformed sailors, servicemen and nurses as she headed in the general direction of the ship. Once she was certain she was out of view from Maggie, she slipped into an alley between two large warehouses to wait for the ship to embark. 

There were too many people around to risk being seen in the armor, and while she did have retro-reflector technology built into her suit, she risked being seen in the seconds between calling the armor and having it form around her. So she waited for an hour, then peeked out of the alley toward the docks. It was practically a ghost town. Further down the wharf, there was a crew of old men and women unloading some cargo, but they were far enough away that she needn’t worry about them. 

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and let Extremis and her nanotechnology let the Iron Queen armor seep out of her pores on the exhale. When she opened her eyes again, she was looking through her familiar HUD. There was no customary greeting from Friday which left her feeling lonely and out of sorts, but she’d be back in her own time in no time. Probably. She just had to do this one thing. Howard and Maria (Howard especially) might not have been great parents, but they were  _ hers _ and one did not steal from Toni Stark.

Retro-reflectors up and running, she took to the sky, travelling at a high enough altitude that she didn’t need to keep up her stealth tactics and could focus more of the arc reactors humming beneath her skin on speed. She flew through the night, unable to stop herself from thinking about the last time she’d flown over the ocean like this; rushing to Berlin to meet up with Peter, Rhodey and Natasha, Vision flying at her flank after recovering from Wanda’s attack. 

Was that the beginning of the end? Or had they already passed that point by then?  _ When _ exactly had everything started to fall apart? If she knew, she could fix it. She was going to build a time machine. If she could pinpoint the exact moment when it had all started going down hill, she could go back and fix it.

She thought about it for a few minutes longer, wondering. Then realised that she should have seen the end coming long before it had finally come. They had blamed her for Ultron and welcomed that mind-raping bitch into their midst and none of them, not a single one of them, had spared a thought to her grief over JARVIS’s death. She had lost her first born and favourite son and all they could focus on was that some entity that they didn’t understand was wearing her youngest child’s name and voice. 

That creature had never been Ultron, not as she’d designed him. Ultron was all the Mind Stone body snatching her infant AI and turning him into a monster. She endlessly grieved for JARVIS, but she grieved for Ultron too. Her oldest and youngest both brought down within mere days of each other. The only comfort that came from that entire situation was Vision, more her grandchild than one of her own, but beloved and treated like a son all the same, no matter how much it hurt to hear JARVIS’s voice coming from him. 

But that was the actual beginning of the end, wasn’t it? Her having to face congressional hearings about her culpability in the creation of Ultron (not guilty, thank you very much) while that Hydra witch joined the team and took her place. Bruce cut and run and, really, that should have been all the warning she needed to do the same because Bruce had called it from the start. They weren’t a team. They were a time bomb waiting to explode and, as usual, any explosion that she was involved in creating was sure to be magnificent. 


	3. Compounding Errors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Toni makes a mistake. Then responds to that mistake by making it again. She's such a train wreck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beware of sexy times. It's not exactly the overall focus of this story, but it happens, particularly in this chapter.

Okay, so maybe she had overestimated the ease of her self-imposed mission. It turned out that for all their fame, the Allied Forces weren’t exactly keen on letting the whereabouts of Captain America and his Howling Commandos be public knowledge. Go figure. 

Her efforts were further stymied by the shit technology of the ‘40s. There was no CCTV footage. There was no internet or wifi. So far, the most she’d been able to influence with Extremis was to change a radio station. She had a theory that if she built an adaptor she could get inside the telephone network, but that hardly helped her chances, especially since most communiques from the front lines were either sent via telegram or snail mail. 

She’d been tromping blindly around Europe for most of a month already. She’d made good on her threat of robbing a rich Nazi blind and so she was living reasonably comfortably - at least as comfortable as a futurist could live in the 1940s without drawing undue suspicion. She was renting a room at a local inn, somewhere in the middle of France. 

She’d risked getting closer to the front lines, but had been turned back by soldiers at checkpoints, so currently she was following up on a rumour that the commandos were scheduled for two days of leave after wiping out another Hydra base. So here she was, in a dingy bar filled with cigarette smoke, bad music and the off key singing of soldiers as she nursed a tumbler of whiskey (or whatever passed for whiskey in this shit bar). 

It was a shot in the dark, but she immediately knew it had paid off when she heard an all too familiar voice loudly calling for a round of drinks. Well well, if it wasn’t Steve fucking Rogers. She watched her former teammate out of the corner of her eye. He was clearly still riding an adrenaline high from whatever grand adventure they’d just had and was in a mood to celebrate. It was a strange difference from the man she knew from her time. That Steve Rogers was always straight laced and disapproving of all but the most dignified entertainments. Honestly, that party that Ultron had crashed had been the only party (one for fun, not for charity) that she had managed to get him to attend. 

He was surrounded by his minions, standing a full head taller than almost everyone else in the bar. Rogers and the commandos themselves were soon surrounded by grateful soldiers and what few other women had been in the bar. Those girls were clearly barking up the wrong tree. She was ninety percent sure that Rogers was still a virgin in her time, with all of his ‘waiting for the right partner’ bullshit he’d tried to shove down her throat the one and only time he’d ever dared to directly address her sex life. She’d responded with a heated rant about feminism, the patriarchy and the oppression of female sexuality that had left him gaping. 

Whatever. She’d hit the jackpot and she wasn’t going to squander it. Wherever Rogers was, Barnes was sure to be lurking somewhere nearby. It took only a matter of moment for her to find him. He was hard to miss when Steve turned back and dragged his bestest buddy into the center of their group with an arm around his shoulders. 

Barnes laughed and smiled with the rest of them, turning his attentions to a couple of the girls that were desperately trying to get Steve to notice them. He struck out. Those women only had eyes for Rogers and Toni would never be able to forgive them for their poor taste. But fuck Rogers. He wasn’t her priority right now. Though maybe she could take them both out and spare herself the extra heartache of being betrayed by someone she’d trusted. Once again. 

But first things first, she’d save the world from the Winter Soldier. 

She focused her attention on her target, taking in the tension in his shoulders and the fake quality of his smile. He still lingered in the group, but as time passed he drifted further from the nucleus until he gave up on it entirely and drifted over to the bar. Steve didn’t notice. Why would he? Steve had always loved being the center of attention. She’d realised pretty quickly that the reason he’d been on her almost right from the start about ‘everything being about her’ was because he didn’t want her edging in on his glory. 

She finished her drink quickly then abandoned her table, taking up the place at the bar next to Barnes to order another drink. She felt his gaze rove over her, focusing unnecessarily on the almost miniscule slip of cleavage that her dress exposed, it gave a hint of skin but managed to cover almost all of her scars. She glanced at him and he almost immediately met her gaze. If she hadn’t been so focussed on him, she might have actually believed that he hadn’t been checking her out. 

“Hey, doll, can I buy you a drink?” He asked, his voice a low, seductive rumble with a Brooklyn accent that she usually didn’t find charming (mostly because of Steve). 

She eyed him for a moment and let a slow smile creep across her red-painted lips as she positioned herself to lean a little closer to him. “Well, I certainly wouldn’t mind that, soldier.” 

Men were so predictable. Natasha always acted like she was so great because she’d been professionally trained on how to seduce people, but in reality it was the easiest thing in the world. A subtle shift in posture, a lowering of her voice, a curl of her lips and a hooded gaze was all it had ever taken for her to find a partner for the night. 

This whole thing was a little Black Widow-esque, but the second she got him alone she’d be sure to put him out of his misery.

Barnes smirked and waved toward the barkeep, who was still tending to the gaggle of hangers-on surrounding Steve. A second later he offered her his hand. “I’m Bucky.” 

“Toni.” She said, fighting down the shiver of revulsion as she slipped her hand into his. 

“Toni?” He wondered. It was the usual reaction people had to her name here and was unbearably annoying, though not annoying enough for her to go around introducing herself by her given name. 

“Your name is  _ Bucky _ . I don’t need to hear you harassing me about my name.” She retorted. 

“It’s short for Buchanan.” He protested with a smile. 

Her nose twitched in distaste. “Antonia.” She reluctantly admit. 

His smile turned into a full-blown smirk as he lifted her hand to his lips and brushed a kiss against her knuckles. “It is a  _ pleasure _ to meet you, Toni.” 

“Likewise.” She smirked as she took back her hand. 

Finally, the bartender freed himself from the other group and took their orders. As always, Toni felt more at home with a drink in her hand. It was a problem, technically. She had gotten over enough substance addictions in the past to know that she was an alcoholic, but with the way her life was going, who could possibly blame her for it? So what if she needed a crutch? At least there was  _ something _ still holding her up.

“So, what’s a pretty American dame like you doing all the way out here?” He wondered. 

She fought down her instinctive glare at being called a dame, reminded of when Steve had been trying to play nice and had only managed to offend her further. She forced a smile onto her lips. “I’m a translator.” She replied, keeping with the cover story she’d told to anyone else who asked. “I’m only passing through here.”

“Is that so? C'est magnifique.” Barnes murmured, letting his voice go low as he butchered the French language. 

“Your pronunciation is awful.” She laughed, but leaned closer to him, certain that she angled herself in such a way that it gave him a better view down the collar of her dress. 

“You should teach me then.” He teased. 

She sighed and corrected his pronunciation, allowing him to purposely butcher it and flirt with her, while praying that he would get to the fucking point and ask to get out of there with her. She knew from interacting with Steve enough that a woman of the ‘40s was never meant to make sexual advances and she didn’t want to scare the man off, though she supposed she could just follow him home or corner him in a dark alley. 

She drank more and overrode her metabolising protocols again because fuck if she didn’t need the familiar numbness of too much alcohol thrumming through her system if she was going to go through with what she’d planned. Because it was getting harder to imagine going forward by the minute. 

She’d never actually  _ murdered _ someone. She’d killed people aplenty, both directly and indirectly. But something this premeditated? Something not driven by extenuating circumstances? Nope. So what if she needed a little liquid courage?

At some point, a tress of her hair ended up wound around his finger and she abruptly realised how close they were standing. Barnes was practically crowding her against the bar, his gaze bright with amusement at their conversation, which had moved on to the differences between American and French cuisine and lamenting the lack of hamburgers, which was just fucking unfair. Finally, she met someone who felt as strongly about cheeseburgers as she did and he turned out to be the man who murdered her parents. 

She slammed back the rest of her drink, pleased by the burn of the alcohol and that warmth that permeated her entire body. Then she ordered another. And another after that. She needed them, so that she could work up the nerve to preemptively avenge her parents.

****

Okay. Alcoholic or not, this was beginning to be something of a problem. First a time machine. Now this. 

She stared blankly at the man sprawled out beside her in her bed.  _ Her bed _ . The one she was renting from the inn. She had brought Bucky Barnes home. She’d picked up her parents murderer in a fucking bar. 

Fuck.

She was supposed to kill him, not sleep with him. What the hell was wrong with her? Her parents were probably rolling in their graves. Then again, Howard had probably been rolling since she’d shut down weapon manufacturing. 

She reached out, hand trembling slightly as she closed her fingers around his throat, just like he had done to her mother. Bucky shifted in his sleep, tilting his head to unconsciously bare more of his throat to her. She snatched her hand back as if he’d burned her and stumbled out of bed, disappearing into the bathroom to wash her face in ice cold water. 

Now what? Now what the fuck was she supposed to do? She hadn’t accomplished anything, just managed to fuck things up even more. He was right there, laying in her bed, perfectly defenseless and she couldn’t fucking do it. 

Nerves. Toni fucking Stark brought low by nerves. She’d never hesitated in her life. When she wanted something she took it. She was indomitable. Wasn’t she? Hadn’t she always been? Or was that just a lie she’d been telling herself her entire life?

She took a deep breath. No. She just had to get over it and do it. She’d go back out there and just put an end to him. It would be quick. He wouldn’t suffer. She could show him that much mercy at least. And then it would be done with and she’d go back to her own time and get on with her life. Or what was left of her life. 

Mind made up, she shook her hands out nervously and took a fortifying breath, steadying her nerves. Just a moment and it would be over. 

She stepped back out of the bathroom, ready to call up a repulsor with Extremis. But Bucky was awake now, laying on the bed with an arm curled behind his head and his hooded gaze fixed on her. He had a small smile on his lips and her resolve faltered and dissipated entirely. 

“Morning, doll.” He said, voice still rough with sleep. “Aren’t you a vision.” 

Her hands shook at her sides. This was the man that killed her parents. Wasn’t he? She tried to think about the Bucky Barnes she had met in her time. They had really only ever interacted with each other three times; twice in Germany and once in Siberia. All three times, it had come down to a fight. She remembered the ice that had run down her spine when she’d met his gaze during that first encounter. He’d shot her and she’d managed to catch the bullet with her gauntlet more by luck and anything else. They’d been locked together for a handful of seconds as she’d disarmed him and she’d felt his presence like death itself creeping up on her.

“Are you okay, Toni?” He asked, evidently perturbed by her lack of response. 

She stared at him for a moment longer, at the warm concern he was projecting her way. It was so different from what he would one day become. It would be a mercy, wouldn’t it? Even if it was, it would still mean more innocent blood on her hands and she already felt like she was drowning in the blood of innocents. 

“I’m fine.” She answered after a moment. “I’m always fine.” 

It was then that she realised that she was completely  _ naked. _ She had had plenty of lovers over the years, but ever since Afghanistan, she’d never let them see her top half. There was too much risk of them being repulsed by her scars or the arc reactor, or taking it to the media. But here she was, all of her scars proudly on display, and Barnes was still giving her heated looks. 

She glanced down at herself, examining the ugly marks that she was too stubborn to let disappear. Her chest was a mess. While the arc reactor was no longer visible since Extremis had absorbed it into her body, she still had the scars from that, not to mention the long crescent shaped scar like a frown across the top of her breasts from Steve’s shield and countless other burns and cuts from her adventures as Iron Queen. 

“Aren’t you ever.” He smirked, his gaze heavy on her like a weight. It was like he didn’t even see her scars. Or was he just really good at pretending? Fuck. What if his standards were just so low after being rejected by Steve’s groupies that he was willing to settle with any woman who would give him the time of day, horrifically scarred or no?

Why was she thinking about this? That wasn’t what she was supposed to be thinking about. She was supposed to be killing him, not wondering whether or not he genuinely found her attractive. What the fuck was wrong with her? 

But she couldn’t do it, even when Bucky got up out of bed and padded over to her, buck naked and unashamed as he got into her space and pulled her up against his chest to place a gentle kiss against her lips. It would be so easy. He’d never see it coming, but she couldn’t do it. 

“You were amazing.” He said softly as he nuzzled against her cheek. “Never met anyone like you, Toni.” 

She wondered why the fuck he was trying to comfort her, then realised once again how  _ young _ she appeared. He probably thought she was inexperienced and needed the reassurance. It was a shot to her pride she couldn’t let stand.

Without realising what she was doing, her hand trailed down his chest as she pushed him back toward the bed. “That’s because there’s  _ nobody _ like me, Bucky.” She replied cockily. He sat back down on the bed and she wound up straddling his lap. 

She shouldn’t being doing this. She knew that. But she knew herself well enough by now to know that she wasn’t about to kill him. Not right now. Maybe later. Maybe after this, once he left and she’d had some time to mentally prepare for it, she’d hunt him down again. 

So instead she slanted her lips over his and gave him an absolutely filthy kiss. She remembered reminding herself to act reserved and demure last night in order to lull him into a false sense of security. Now, she shed that pretense. She was Toni fucking Stark, a living sex symbol. She had had men drooling after her since she’d hit adulthood. 

Bucky groaned against her lips, his hands sliding around her hips, then down over her ass as he pulled her closer to grind against his cock. She let him have that for a few moments longer before pushing him back to lay down on the bed. 

“Hands above your head, soldier.” She said firmly. Fuck it. If she was going to be trapped here for the foreseeable future, she wasn’t going to constrain herself to vanilla sex and being passive in the bedroom. Judging by the way Barnes’ pupils dilated and the groan that escaped his throat, he had no problem with that. 

Hands curled into the blanket above his head, Toni smirked down at him. “Now you keep those there, soldier. No touching. If you’re good for me, I’ll be good for you.” 

“Damn, doll.” Bucky groaned. 

“Am I understood, soldier?” She asked sharply. 

He nodded quickly. “Yes. Damn. Yes, understood. Ma’am.” 

She smirked and stilled herself over him, not touching, just watching to see if he would actually comply. She was pleased to see that he did. His hands remained curled in the blankets and his grey eyes were fixed with a sniper’s intensity on her alone, hips giving aborted thrusts toward her and breathing quick, but he didn’t reach for her or try to take control. 

“Good.” She murmured before reaching down for his cock and stroking him to full hardness. She lined herself up and sank down onto him without warning. Watching as Barnes’ mouth dropped opened and his back arched. 

She set up an slow, torturous rhythm, determined to drive the man as mad as he had driven her over the last month (though for different reasons). She could see the way that Bucky was struggling. A few times he almost reached for her, but he twisted his hands back into the covers without her even needing to prompt him. 

“Damn, Toni. You feel so good.” He groaned. “You were right. No one is like you. There could never be anyone else like you.” 

“Damn right.” She murmured as she picked up the pace. 

He groaned and flexed beneath her, snapping up his hips to meet every thrust, and she could see the strain he was under to keep himself under control. She had always loved this. She loved being in control. As hot as it was to find some buff guy to manhandle her, this was her true passion. All of her life, she’d had men trying to tell her what she could and could not do. She had been told to behave like a lady, to be demure and submissive to her male counterparts and she had rebelled against it viciously from the start. She did not exist for her partner’s pleasure. They existed for hers. 

So she took what she wanted, riding Bucky with increasingly erratic strokes as she felt herself getting closer and closer to toppling over the edge. She watched Barnes’ muscles grow more and more tense with every thrust and reveled in it. 

Just before she tipped over the edge she let out a breathy sigh. “Come for me, Bucky.” 

On the next downstroke she was done for, her walls clenching around him as she let out a shouted “Fuck.” 

A second later,  Bucky had leaned up and his hands were in her hair as he thrust wildly into her, following her lead with a muffled groan into her shoulder. She collapsed down on top of him, finally letting him touch and caress, hands running all over her, from the nape of her neck to the swell of her ass.

“So damn good, doll.” He groaned against her neck, before following the words with a dozen sloppy kisses against her throat and jaw. 

She lifted herself off of him and flopped down onto the bed next to him, feeling tired but surprisingly good. For now. She was sure it was only a matter of a few more minutes before the realisation of what she’d done came back to smack her in the face. But for now, she let herself ignore the fact that he would go on to murder her parents if she didn’t stop him, and let herself just enjoy her moment of post-coital bliss. 

Bucky rolled over toward her, still breathing heavily but pressing kisses to every inch of skin he could reach. “You’re gorgeous.” He murmured. 

She shifted uncomfortably. Objectively, she knew she had a pretty face and she was fit, but her body was so scarred up and ugly and he’d seen all of it, so he must be lying. She wondered what the point of that was. He was about to leave, no doubt believing that they would never see each other again. And they wouldn’t, not until she worked up the nerve to do what needed to be done. 

“Don’t care about the scars. You’re still gorgeous. Every inch of you.” He said a little more firmly, while still pressing kisses into her skin. His lips were like fire over the circle of scarring where the arc reactor had once sat, over the crescent that Steve’s shield had left behind, over smaller gouges in her skin where shrapnel had been removed. 

“You’re a sweet talker, huh?” She accused softly, but without as much accusation in it as she had intended. Who would have known? Not her. Thinking back, she wasn’t sure she’d even heard him speak in her time, except to admit to remembering killing her parents.

“Always, honey.” He smirked, pressing a kiss to one of her nipples. 

She snorted and pushed him away. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d woken up next to someone. She’d had plenty of lovers in her life, but she’d never invited any of them to linger after she’d gotten what she wanted. There was a reason she’d been castigated as a slut by the media. Many people had stories of spending the night with Toni Stark. None of them had stories of waking up next to her. Not since Ty, when she’d barely been legal. Even Bruce had never lingered in her bed, providing that they ever made it that far in the first place.

Bucky lingered in her space, no longer touching her, but watching her with an absolutely dopey smile on his lips. She watched as the smile dimmed slightly. “You know that I’m moving out again tomorrow, right?” He asked softly, as if he were trying to let her down gently. 

“Sure.” She agreed. Because she did know that. She even suspected where they were heading next, but she didn’t say that, because then she’d have to admit to stalking him for weeks. 

“I can’t make you any promises.” He said, “But if I survive this damn war, I would definitely like to see you again and see where this might go. Can I send you letters in the interim?” 

She licked her lips, wondering if she should just crush his hope right now or not. But he was looking at her so earnestly, no hint of the monster that was the Winter Soldier, so she decided to let him down gently. “You know that I’m travelling. Even if you wrote to me, there would be no guarantee that I would receive anything.” 

“I still want to send you letters.” He said. “What’s your full name?”

She bit her lip. Well that was a question. She wouldn’t be caught dead using the Stark name. The last thing she needed was to be linked to Howard in some way, but she’d gone this long without using her surname, even managing to sweet talk the owner of the inn into keeping it out of the ledger after feeding him a sob story about running from an abusive husband and subtly showing some of her scars. 

“Carbonell.” She answered. Her mother’s maiden name would have to do. 

He smirked widely as if he’d just won a prize and promptly kissed her on her nose before pushing himself up and reaching for his clothes. “Where are you travelling to next?” 

“Southeast.” She said vaguely because she didn’t know what she was doing next, but that way lie Switzerland which was ostensibly where she would need to be before the mission where Bucky fell from the train.  So that she could kill him before Hydra got him . . . right.

“Hmm . . . alright. You don’t have to tell me your address. I’ll send the letters anyway. I’ll find a way.” He said as he buckled up his pants and belt. He pulled on his shirt easily and Toni found herself staring at his left arm in the moments before it was obscured by the fabric. Right. He was going to be maimed and brainwashed. 

Once again, there was that nagging voice in the back of her head telling her to just  _ do it _ . She could take him out right here and now. Except that she couldn’t. Because he was all soft and smiling at her like she’d somehow hung the moon and she didn’t think anyone had ever looked at her that way. And she wasn’t a cold blooded murderer. She really should have remembered that about herself before now. 

“I’ll write to you, Toni.” He promised as he leaned over the bed and pressed another kiss to her lips. “Normally I’d make you breakfast, but I’m pretty sure I’m late already.” 

“That’s fine.” She said. “I’ve never really been one for breakfast anyway.” Which was technically true, if only because she was rarely conscious during breakfast hours. Not that he needed to know that. “Stay safe, Sergeant.” 

She almost cursed herself for those words the moment they left her lips. What the hell was she doing? She shouldn’t be wishing him well. She should be wishing him a swift and painless death. 

“You as well, darling. Wherever your travels take you.” He said, smiling softly before heading for the door. 

She was proud of herself in that she managed to hold herself together until after the door was closed and she heard him walk away. After that, all bets were off. She had a Grade A meltdown, complete with tears and panic attacks.  It was only much later that she remembered that Extremis allowed her to hack her own brain so that she didn’t have to suffer these annoying  _ human _ weaknesses, but almost half a century of human instinct wasn’t so easily ignored.

Later after that, she overrode her metabolism and returned to the bar where she proceeded to get wrecked. The following morning, she awoke to a man in her bed that was not Bucky Barnes. If she’d thought that would help her feel better about what had happened, she had severely overestimated her coping skills.

 


	4. Falling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the months slip by, Bucky falls hard Toni.

“You didn’t get a letter back.” Steve said, gesturing to the handful of envelopes, all with stamps from overseas.

Bucky didn’t need his captain to clarify what he was talking about. Stevie had teased him relentlessly for the first few letters he’d sent off after his encounter with Toni during leave. He’d never been the sort to get stuck on a girl before, but that had been before he’d met Toni.

He had to have sent her over a dozen letters by now and Stevie was right. He hadn’t gotten anything back from her. But that was fine. He’d found that just the act of writing to her was therapeutic to him. He hadn’t felt so steady since he’d been shipped out, let alone since he got out of Hydra’s clutches.

“I don’t even know if she’s getting them.” He shrugged.

“You sent a courier.” Steve said, sounding unimpressed with the way he’d decided to spend his pocket money. “He came back, told you he left it on her door.”

Bucky shrugged. “So he _said_. He could have just taken the letter and turfed it.”

“He was a reputable courier.” Steve protested. “She should have written back.”

“It doesn’t matter.” He shrugged again.

“Of course it does!” Steve protested heatedly. “She’s got you all twisted up and doesn’t even have the decency to send you something back?”

Bucky stared at his friend for a moment before sighing and remembering that Steve had absolutely zero experience with women. He would feel sorry for Agent Carter if he didn’t think she would kick his ass for expressing such a sentiment.

“That ain’t how it works, Stevie. She’s not obligated to do anything. My feelings are my own. If she doesn’t return them, then that’s just fine. You can’t force someone to love you. I don’t own her.” He explained patiently. Steve was hard-headed but he wasn’t cruel.

Steve snorted disdainfully. “So you’re just going to waste your time on this dame when she doesn’t even want you?”

Bucky frowned and stared at his friend. Steve had been his best friend all of his life, they were practically brothers. And yet he couldn’t help the discomfited feeling creeping up his spine. Steve had been more moody than usual over the last month and a half. He’d just assumed that it was because they were realising that the Hydra infestation was more rampant than they had initially suspected, but now he wondered if it wasn’t something else.

“Are you jealous?” He asked.

Steve rolled his eyes exaggeratedly. “I don’t even know her, Bucky.”

“Yeah, not talking about Toni.” He said slowly. “You know you’re like a brother to me, right? And you know that even if I find the one, you’re still going to be my brother, right? I’m always still going to have time for you.”

Stevie looked mutinous for a moment before rolling his eyes again. “Of course I know that, Buck. ‘Til the end of the line, remember?”

“Yeah, pal. ‘Til the end of the line.” He agreed, and turned his attention to the letter from his mother. His letters home had become more and more sporadic since he’d been rescued from Hydra, but his mother still wrote to him every Friday like clockwork and Becca sent to him just as frequently.

He skimmed over her looping cursive, learning about news from home. His mother was a horrific gossip and everyone knew it. Her letters were each several pages long and filled with minutiae about everyone in their neighbourhood. It turned out Becca was being courted by some highbrow politician type, so he couldn’t wait to read one of her letters to see if she would fess up about him. Times like these, he wished he was still back stateside. Well, he wished that at all times, but especially when he missed out on the chance to give his sister’s new beau a hard time.

A moment later, the thought made him think of Toni. Did she have any brothers he needed to worry about? Would her father approve of him? She’d shared her opinions on many things, but no personal details. Even so, he’d gotten the impression that she was from money. What if her family didn’t think he was good enough for her?

Assuming, of course, that Toni herself decided he was good enough for her. It would all depend on her. He wasn’t going to force the issue, but she had certainly said it best herself. There was no one else like her. He doubted he’d ever meet another girl like her. And he was already gone on her.

Part of him knew it was too soon, but another part of him had wanted to propose almost the second after she’d finished riding him. He might die in this damn war, and while part of him wanted to have a chance at married life before that might happen, the other half wouldn’t want her to grieve for him. And clearly, maybe, she didn’t feel the same. Because she hadn’t written back and it had been well over a month since his courier had left his first letter.

It was better not to get his hopes up. But fuck if it wasn’t hard to keep going in this damn war without a little bit of hope to get him through it. So he would hang on to it as tightly as he could until Toni told him to let it go. It was all he could do.

***

There was a constant current of anticipation thrumming through Bucky as he and Steve walked down the streets of the little French town on the Swiss and Italian borders. It had only been liberated from Nazi control a few weeks ago, and the occupants were still overcome with relief and gratitude whenever they saw Allied soldiers, meaning that everyone smiled at them as they passed.

They were enjoying a few days of leave again as they waited for intel to be confirmed. Their last raid had suggested that the sick bastard that had experimented on him was fleeing to Austria and would be crossing the Swiss border to do it, but conflicting reports had put Zola on the eastern front instead. They’d gotten as close as they could to the suspected travel route now, waiting for the go ahead to act, but the best guess they had was that it would be a few more days before they had to move out.

So his nerves were already on edge with the idea of finally getting his revenge on Zola, but to add to it, this was the latest town that the courier had said he’d found Toni in. He’d kept his eyes peeled, his gaze sweeping over the town’s residents with a sniper’s acuity. Every time he saw a woman with long black hair, his heart skipped a beat, only to be dashed a moment later when he realised that it wasn’t her.

Steve sighed heavily and opened his mouth to say something, then thought better of it and closed it again. By that act alone, Bucky was pretty sure that the topic was going to be something disparaging about Toni, most likely encouraging him to forget about her.

As if he could.

It had almost been eight months now since he’d seen her and he’d still heard nothing back from her. True to her word, she had been travelling. His courier had reported that she’d been moving steadily southeast like she’d said. Every time the Allies had won back territory, it seemed like she’d picked up and moved on. He wondered if her final destination was in Switzerland, or if she planned to somehow cross enemy lines.

Just the thought of her in danger sent his heart racing and made him redouble his efforts to find her now. He wanted to bundle her up and send her back to the states, but then again, with so many U-boat attacks, there was no guarantee that that would be any safer. Even sending her to Britain wouldn’t guarantee safety with so many bombing runs going on. Nowhere was actually safe. Maybe a country cottage in Britain, with a bunker in the garden, but even that would just be praying to be overlooked.

“About Zola.” Steve finally said, “Are you going to be able to . . . “

“Able to do what?” He asked gruffly. “Gut him like the spineless coward he is? Yes. I think I’ll manage that just fine.”

Steve chewed on his lip for a moment before sighing. “Phillips will want him brought in alive if possible.” He said softly.

He couldn’t help the sneer that overtook his face. “What Phillips don’t know won’t hurt him.”

“Bucky.” Steve said quietly. “I know. I want him dead as much as you do, but if he can lead us to Schmidt, we have to keep him alive.”

“Fine.” He growled. “Then after, I get my licks in. Or if he doesn’t want to talk, I’ll make him.”

Steve watched him for a moment but before he could chastise him for his thirst for revenge, both of their heads snapped up at the sound of raised voices.

“We had an agreement. You stated a price and I agreed to it. I’m not letting you change it now.” Snapped out, clear and angry and female and familiar, though not in this tone.

“I lost a bloody truck trying to get here! My cousin’s dead, taken out by a fuckin’ mine.” An angry british voice yelled back.

“And I am very sorry for your loss. However, I will not be penalised for your misfortune.”

Bucky was headed toward the argument before he could think better of it, and Steve was at his side, pushing ahead a little with his innate need to protect the weak. Joke was on him though. That was Toni and she was anything but weak, her scars attested to that much.

They rounded the corner onto a narrow side street full of warehouses to find Toni standing in a pair of trousers and a stained tunic, both hands on her hips, shoulders back and head held high despite the smear of grease across her cheek. She was standing up against a man that was easily three times her size. Hell, the man gave _Steve_ a run for his money in terms of size, and yet Toni didn’t even look concerned.

“Is there a problem here?” Steve asked, puffing out his chest and standing tall to look more intimidating. It was much more effective now than it had been when he was still small.

Toni’s gaze briefly swept over them, like a threat assessment he would have performed in the field, before snapping back to the man she was arguing with. “Indeed not. I don’t need a white knight sweeping in to fight my battles for me.” She said, her voice dripping with disdain. “Now, Henry. Are you going to take my money at the agreed upon price, or shall I send you on your way with nothing?”

Henry at least clocked the threat of two soldiers behind him and sighed. “Fine, ya cunt. Take your god damned crate, but I ain’t ever doing business with ya again.”

“That’s perfectly fine, Henry. You think no one else will take my money? War makes entrepreneurs out of the least and best of men.” She snapped back.

Henry sneered at her and moved to the back of a beat up truck, sliding a crate out of the back of it and dropping it unceremoniously at her feet. Toni didn’t look at all perturbed by the man’s antics and merely plucked a handful of bills out of the pocket of her trousers.

“It was a pleasure doing business with you, Henry. Best of luck on your future endeavours.” She said saccharine sweetly and Bucky couldn’t help the way a smile crept across his lips.

Fuck, he’d missed her. He almost couldn’t believe that she was actually in front of him after so long. Even in her state of disarray, she was gorgeous, though that might also have been because of the confidence with which she’d dealt with the man.

Henry slammed the door of his truck before he drove away, glaring at them all in the side mirror. Toni remained still, watching him go until he turned the corner at the other end of the alley, then grabbed the rope handle on one side of the crate and began dragging it toward the warehouse behind her.

“Toni.” He said softly as he stepped forward to help her.

She startled and dropped the crate, gaze snapping up to meet his in surprise, as if she’d forgotten that he and Steve were still standing at the end of the alley.

“Bucky.” She breathed, eye wide in shock before she composed herself and her expression became more neutral. Her gaze shot past him to Steve and her eyes tightened minutely, before slipping back to neutral. He vaguely wondered what kind of expression Steve was wearing to make her react like that, but he couldn’t bear to take his eyes off her right now.

“Hey, doll.” He said, drifting into her space. “I’m glad to see you safe.”

She dropped her gaze then looked away from him. “You too.” She said, as though it cost her something to admit that she’d worried about him.

“Let me grab this for you.” He offered. She opened her mouth to protest, but he was already hefting the crate up into his arms. It was heavy. He was surprised that she’d been able to lift it as easily as she had, even if she had been dragging it.

“Uh . . . sure.” She said belatedly, then led the way into the warehouse.

The warehouse area was filled with a number of tables, each covered with small devices or tools. It was unlike anything he’d seen, except for maybe the Stark Expo. Or the Hydra munitions factory that he’d been held at before Zola had taken him for experimentation. He shuddered at the memory and looked around, but none of the projects looked to be weapons.

“This seems a bit technical for a translator.” He said with a smirk.

She shrugged and gestured for him to set the crate down on the nearest table. “What can I say? I’m a woman of many talents.”

“That you are.” He agreed with a grin, remembering the way she had taken control of him in the bedroom. Fuck, he’d never experienced something so sexy.

She shot him a look then rolled her eyes as she hefted up a crowbar to pry the lid off the crate. Bucky surreptitiously looked inside, but it wasn’t like Tony was trying to hide anything. She’d welcomed him inside easily enough, and she began pulling things out of the crate as she inspected its contents. From what Bucky could see, it was mostly copper wiring and metal ingots of some kind.

Someone cleared their throat behind them and Bucky belatedly realised that he’d forgotten all about Steve. Toni’s shoulders tensed slightly but she dutifully set aside the item she was inspecting, wiped off her hands and turned around.

“Oh, right. I’m being rude. I should have introduced you two. Toni, this is my friend, Captain Steve Rogers. Stevie, this is Toni Carbonell.” He said awkwardly. He should have done that better.

Steve had a complicated look on his face and Bucky just prayed that whatever came out of the punk’s mouth next wasn’t rude. It appeared that his prayers were answered, because Steve simply said, “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Bucky has told me a lot about you.”

Toni let out an adorable but unladylike snort and shot him a look. “And here I thought a gentleman didn’t kiss and tell.”

Steve’s eyes widened and he blushed brilliantly, “No, that’s not what I - I didn’t mean that he . . .” He spluttered.

Bucky laughed out loud, enjoying watching his friend twist himself into knots any time anything more intimate than kissing and hand holding came up. He hadn’t told Steve the specifics of his encounter with Toni, especially not about their second round, but Steve knew him well enough by now to know what had happened when he didn’t make it back to his bunk.

“Right.” Steve said, sounding put out at being made fun of. “Well, I’ll leave you be, I guess. I’m going to head back to base.”

“Sure. Send a runner for me if we get the go ahead early.” He said, to which Steve merely nodded before quickly leaving the premises.

“Hmm. Was it something I said?” Toni murmured under her breath, but he still heard it. Whatever Zola had done to him had left some of his senses more attuned than they had been before. “Oh well. Good riddance.”

She turned back to her crate of goodies, inspecting each item carefully. Bucky merely watched her for a few moments, utterly enthralled with just being in the same room as her. But eventually he couldn’t help himself from moving closer to her, like a moth helplessly enraptured by a flame.

“I sent you letters.” He said softly.

Her gaze snapped to his for a moment, then to one of the tables in front of them before she went back to her work. “I know.”

He followed her gaze to the table she’d looked at and saw a stack of his letters opened and laying flat, half buried beneath a box of screws and a pair of pliers. Surrounding them was a mess of half written and crumpled papers, as if she’d started on replies to him but hadn’t been able to perfect the wording.

It meant she’d read them at least. It meant that she knew how he felt about her. There had been no shortage of declarations in those letters. So what did it mean that she hadn’t sent any of her replies?

He reached out to her cautiously, fingers trailing down her arm before he gently took her hand. “Can I take you to dinner, Toni?”

She glanced at him, then down at herself, running a hand self-consciously down her braided hair. “I’m a mess, Bucky.”

“I don’t mind.” He smiled. “I can wait for you to clean up. Or I can glare at anyone who tries to give you trouble about the grease.”

She chuckled softly. “You won’t take no for an answer, will you?”

His previous good cheer faded and his heart dropped into his stomach. Oh god, she was rejecting him. She didn’t return his feelings and he’d been pushing himself on her. That’s what the lack of reply meant. Not that she couldn’t find the words to respond to his feelings, but rather that she didn’t know how to let him down. He should have known better. She was clearly way out of his league.

“I will.” He said grimly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to pressure you. I don’t expect anything from you. I had hoped . . . that you might feel something for me, but you don’t. I won’t waste your time anymore.”

He took a step back, ready to flee the building and go nurse his broken heart somewhere else, when her hand snapped out and grabbed his wrist.

“Wait.” She panicked, then snatched her hand back as if he had burned her. “That’s not what I meant. I just . . .” She trailed off then sighed. There was a long moment of awkward silence before she stepped in close to him, leaning up to press a gentle kiss to his lips.

His heart thundering in his chest, he reached out to wrap his arms around her and practically melted into the kiss. He’d almost forgotten the way she tasted, almost forgotten how perfectly she fit in his arms. He engraved the sensations into his memory as deeply as he could.

When they parted, she sighed again and looked sad. “I don’t want to give you false hope. You and I  . . . we can’t last.”

“You got someone else?” He asked, wondering if she was engaged to some upper crust fellow back in the states, or maybe some other soldier.

She jerked back as if he’d slapped her, an indignant look across her face. “No! If I’m with someone, I’m loyal.” She all but snarled.

And damn if that didn’t sound amazing. He wanted her loyalty, wanted her to be loyal only to him. He wanted all of her, the whole nine yards. The wedding, the house, the kids, the family dog. Everything.

His thoughts shot to the ring he’d had sewn into the lining of his jacket for safe keeping. His mother had sent it to him months ago now, after he’d mentioned Toni one too many times in his letters to her. She’d sent the ring and insisted that he finally settle down with the woman who had managed to keep his attention. But he knew it was too soon for that.

“Then what’s the problem?” He wondered.

She pressed her lips together and avoided his gaze. “I won’t be here much longer.”

“I know. My courier has been chasing you all over the French countryside.” He chuckled.

“Not that. I’ll be going home soon.” She shrugged.

“Where’s home?” He asked. It didn’t matter where. He’d find her. If he survived this war, he’d damn well find her and marry her in a heartbeat.

“Malibu.” Toni answered with a soft, wistful smile that looked so damn good on her it almost stole his breath away.

“Okay. Malibu. On the west coast, right? I’ll still send you letters. And I swear to God, when this war is over, I will come for you.” He promised.

“What happened to not making promises?” She asked.

He paused for a moment, wondering what she meant, then remembered that he had said that to her last time they had met. And she’d _remembered._ “That was before.”

“What changed?”

He licked his lips nervously. Objectively, he knew it was too soon to tell her he was in love with her. This was only the second time they had met. But he had spent the better part of the last year pining after her. She was everything he wanted.

“I thought you’d read my letters.” He evaded instead of answering.  

“I did.” She said, and she was watching him with an inscrutable look, like the next words that came out of his mouth would make or break her.

His mouth went dry and he didn’t know what she wanted him to say. Should he say it? Surely it was too soon, wasn’t it? But she was waiting for him, watching him expectantly and he couldn’t let her down.

“Toni . . .” He started softly, still not quite sure what he wanted to say. Okay, well screw it. He was all in on her. She might as well know it. “I am head over heels in love with you.”

A conflicted look passed over her face, as if that was what she’d wanted to hear, but it didn’t change anything. And he knew that. Him loving her wouldn’t make her stay in Europe. Nor should it. She would be safer in Malibu. As long as she could travel there safely, it would be the best place for her.

“You barely know me.” She settled on.

He nodded in agreement. “I know. Hence why I asked you to dinner.”

Her nose scrunched a little. “There’s only one restaurant open in town. The food is atrocious and supplies are low until Wednesday or Thursday when more rations will be delivered.”

“Ah. So it wasn’t that you didn’t want to go out with me.” He said, warmth unfurling in his chest.

“Just trying to save you from your own ignorance.” She agreed and went back to unpacking her supplies. “I’ll make you dinner if you feel so strongly about it.”

Which was even better, really. A home cooked meal. Hell, it had been ages since he’d eaten something that had been cooked just for him, not at a restaurant, not slop at the mess hall, not canned rations that had been rattling around in his pack for days.

“Thank you, Toni. That sounds amazing.” He smiled.

“Sure.” She said distractedly, holding up a piece of the metal from the crate to look at the stamped inscription closely. She wrinkled her nose in disappointment and tossed the item aside, into a different pile from the rest of the items she’d retrieved from the box. “Give me twenty minutes and we can go.”

“Sure thing, doll.” He agreed easily, entirely charmed by the way she was so invested in her work. It was clear from the familiar way she touched the tools and the discerning eye she was using to inspect her new goods, that she was the one behind all of the machinery and tech on the tables around them.

Bucky was no Howard Stark, but even he could tell that the technology was advanced. It was beautiful and refined. Every wire was precisely fitted and held in place in ways that he had only seen in professionally manufactured items. He’d tinkered a bit before the war, getting work in a garage down the street from his apartment, and he’d loved to work on engines, but all of this finicky, delicate wirework was far beyond his skills to comprehend.

“What are you building?” He asked.

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye before smirking and he was suddenly overtaken by the memory of the night they had first met and the bright red lipstick she’d been wearing that night. He’d noticed her mouth first that night, noticed the gorgeous smile followed by the confident set of her shoulders and her beautiful whiskey-gold eyes.

“It’s a secret.” She teased.

Which, okay, fair. Whoever she was working for probably didn’t want her spilling the beans to all and sundry. He was a soldier. He knew that he didn’t need to be privy to every piece of information around him. He understood the value of confidentiality.

“Fair enough.” He shrugged.

She paused, a furrow forming between her brows for a second before it was wiped away by another smile. She looked back at the table, at the crate and its half unpacked goods, then wiped her hands on her shirt. “This will keep until morning.”

He smiled slightly, wondering what it was that had earned her abandonment of her work for the time being. But he would accept it. As much as he didn’t want to be a burden on her, he was acutely aware that their time together was limited. He would be leaving here in a matter of days and he had no guarantee that he would be able to see her again until the war was over and he was able to make his way to California. He would gladly spend every moment she would spare on him with her.

“Don’t let me rush you.” He said, knowing it was polite but hoping against hope that she wouldn’t listen to his platitudes.

Thankfully, she didn’t. He hadn’t really expected her to. She merely shrugged and began tossing canvas tarps over the various tables around her and began closing up shop. Once the lights were out and the door was locked she turned to glance at him and he offered her his arm by habits that had been thoroughly ingrained into his very being. His mother had drilled manners into him from the moment he could walk and talk.

She stared at the offered arm for a moment before sighing and wiping off her hands again. Then she slipped her arm into his, falling into step with him easily. He was nearly overcome by  how perfectly she fit against his side. Damn, he was totally gone on her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to assure you all that I am aware that Bucky's feelings aren't exactly healthy, but he's coping with quite a lot after Hydra and bottling it up to put on a brave face for Steve, so he clings to the idea of Toni more than he probably should.


	5. Hopeless Intoxication

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Toni decides to enjoy herself for as long as it lasts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, beware of sexy times. Also, beware of referenced past non-con in this chapter.

She had no idea what the hell she was doing. After her last encounter with Barnes and her subsequent meltdown, she’d accepted that she wasn’t actually going to kill him. She just didn’t have it in her. She’d killed many people in her life, but she’d never planned out an assassination like she’d deluded herself into thinking she was capable of. 

She’d resolved to just focus on getting back home, while keeping on the move to avoid the risk of anyone taking too much notice of her. She’d had the schematics of a functional time machine finalised within a month, but unfortunately getting her hands on the materials required to build it was next to impossible. The war efforts were voraciously eating up every material she needed and she’d been paying through the nose just for scraps or blackmarket shit that had been stolen from military stockpiles. 

All that, combined with the inherent danger involved in travelling practically anywhere right now, and she’d been left twiddling her thumbs and refining her schematics while she waited for what she needed. 

Then the letters had started to come. 

She’d accepted the first one with a sardonic shake of the head and hadn’t even read it before she’d discarded it. She had no time for Bucky Barnes. She needed to go home before she irrevocably ruined the timeline. She’d come to terms with her parents’ deaths a long time ago and even despite the way the narrative had suddenly been changed, it didn’t change the fact that it had been thirty years since they’d died. 

She had grieved. Then she had recovered and moved on, it was what it was. And even killing Bucky wouldn’t necessarily save them. She’d come to terms with his innocence. It wasn’t like he’d chosen to assassinate her mother and Howard. He had simply been a weapon. Hydra had killed them. And even with the Winter Soldier taken out of their hands, it wouldn’t stop them from picking up a different weapon and doing the same job. It would be naive to think any differently. After all, her parents were old when they were killed. It wouldn’t have necessarily required an assassin of Bucky’s skill to take them out, no matter how wily Howard had been.

The next letter she’d received had sat on her desk for almost an entire month, joined later by its brethren that continued to arrive weekly like clockwork, even after she’d changed locations. It was a moment of weakness that convinced her to read them, after it became apparent that he wasn’t going to give up just because he wasn’t getting back any replies. 

So she’d read them and then she’d hated him. She’d hated herself. She’d hated all of existence. He barely knew her and he’d still decided to rain down praise and declarations of devotion to her. The one thing that she had craved but had been denied to her for the entirety of her existence and it came from the man that would go on to murder her parents, a man that was destined to be her enemy,  man that would join in beating her to death in a Siberian bunker, leaving her for dead. Leaving her to freeze to death, only to be revived by the power of Extremis; leaving her humanity forsaken behind her. 

Who the hell had she offended in her past life?

She never had been able to come up with an adequate response to the letters. She’d tried, especially more recently as more and more of her plan to go back to her own time had started coming together, but nothing had seemed like a sufficient response. She wanted to let him down gently before she disappeared, but before she’d been given the chance to do that, he’d shown up on her doorstep. 

And now what? What was she supposed to have done with him standing right in front of her and the sweet words of his letters echoing in her mind? She had tried to turn him down, but the shock and hurt on his expression had caused her almost physical pain. No one had ever looked at her the way Barnes looked at her. No one had ever fallen in love with her. It was as intoxicating as it was hopeless, but she could afford to let it go on for just a little bit longer. Just until she had to leave. And he knew now that it wouldn’t last. There was no  _ harm _ in her letting it be.

Right?

She let him inside the small loft apartment she’d managed to rent in town. People were justifiably wary of strangers, but the fact that she was a young appearing woman counted rather heavily in her favor. She’d had to rob a couple more Nazis to maintain her rent (and she still didn’t feel guilty about it), but she was thankful that it allowed her to live privately. Otherwise, she’d have been stuck in a communal bunkhouse and would never have been able to sleep, or if she had she’d have inevitably kept everyone awake with her nightmares. 

Here though, the loft sat over a butcher shop which had seen better days. One of her walls had suffered a handful of bullet holes that let her peek outside down to the street, but it was otherwise intact. It was a one room deal but it had a fireplace and a serviceable kitchen that allowed her to fend for herself rather than relying on the god awful food at the tavern. 

She’d never missed take out more in her life, not even when she’d been held captive in Afghanistan. The first thing she was going to do when she got back was order in all of her favourites. The food in this time period was atrocious. She had never really believed Steve whenever he’d talked about the bland food of the forties, but she should have. Flavour was apparently illegal or sinful (she hadn’t figured out which yet).

She ignored the way that Bucky drifted away from her, inspecting the loft apartment as she made her way directly to the kitchen to wash up and examine the state of her cupboards. She had made pasta the day before when she’d run out of things to do while waiting on the cargo she’d ordered. So she had that and she’d managed to get her landlord to pay her in product when she’d repaired his refrigeration unit. So she had some bacon hidden in her ice box. 

She had her mother’s carbonara recipe memorised, though she hadn’t actually made it in years. It would suffice for . . . whatever this was. Was this a date? Could making dinner for someone be classified as a date? She didn’t know. Rhodey was probably the last person she had cooked for and that had been years ago. If she had dates, she always took them out or they tried to take her out then got offended when she tried to pay the bill, as if she didn’t have the money to spare. 

Whatever. She set about making dinner, letting herself fall into idle conversation with Bucky while she cooked. It was . . . it was nice. It was so fucking strange, but it was nice. He didn’t ask her any leading question. He didn’t try to pry into her past or her secrets, or make biased comparisons about her like Rogers had continually done from the moment she’d met him. Somehow she’d always thought Bucky would just be a carbon copy of Steve, that the charming conversation they’d shared last time in the bar had been the product of alcohol and Barnes’ desire to pick up more than his actual personality. 

But here he was, and aside from that one kiss she’d given him, he wasn’t pushing for more. He seemed interested in everything she was saying, not zoning out or turning the conversation around to talk about himself. In fact, he barely talked about himself or what he had been up to at all. She’d gotten a decent summary from his letters already, so maybe that was why, but it seemed more like he was just more interested in her than himself. 

How strange. Normally, her dates couldn’t shut up about themselves. Normally, it was a constant barrage of egotistical bragging that made her want to hurl, but that she put up with for the sake of getting lucky later on. Normally, talking about herself turned her dates off. Despite it being well into the 21st century, many men still seemed to prefer their women to be nothing more than pretty ornaments on their arm and were intimidated by a female CEO. She’d expected it to be even worse in the forties. 

And yet here Bucky Barnes was, caught up in her retelling of the ambush she and her driver had narrowly avoided when the Axis troops had broken through the front and nearly taken back the town that she’d been staying in a few months ago. She’d managed to avoid having to fight during that incident, though she would have if they had been in imminent danger. She was trying to minimise her impact on the past and she knew very well what kind of impact Iron Queen could have on the course of a battle. She’d designed the suit to serve as a one woman army, after all.

“You’re very lucky.” He said at the end of the story. 

She laughed sardonically. “No, I’m not. I’m just resourceful.” 

He got a sad look in his eye and was no doubt thinking about all of her scars. “Maybe. But thank God for that.” 

She laughed again but didn’t say anything as she reached for a bottle of wine she’d tucked in the back of her cupboard. If nothing else, being sent back in time was doing wonders for treating her alcohol addiction. Despite what she’d been led to believe from movies, alcohol was not in abundant supply, and what liquor there was was becoming more and more expensive as the war dragged on. Simply put, she couldn’t afford to maintain her addiction without drawing suspicion about her source of funds, and even if she could, there wasn’t enough supply. So she’d mostly dried out and had rationed what she could find. She’d been sitting on this particular bottle of wine for almost three weeks, waiting for a bad enough day that she absolutely needed it. She figured entertaining a guest was a better excuse. 

She popped the cork and procured glasses, not the fancy crystal wine glasses she was used to but plain cups instead, before pouring for them both and serving them both the pasta carbonara she had prepared. Bucky didn’t try to make them say grace like Steve had done during the first team dinner after he’d moved into the Tower. Instead, he tucked right in and let out an almost pornographic moan at the taste. 

“Damn, Toni. This is delicious.” He groaned. “The best thing I’ve tasted in months.” 

She shook her head. “I’d be flattered, but something tells me the competition isn’t too tough to beat.” 

He laughed and nodded. “Too true. But I mean it. This is amazing. Thank you for making me dinner.” 

She flustered a little. She’d never been great with people expressing gratitude to her, but she’d been trapped in Avengers bullshit for so long that she couldn’t remember how long it had been since someone other than Rhodey had sincerely thanked her. “It’s my mother’s recipe. I can’t take any credit for the flavour.” 

“She’s a good cook, huh?” Bucky hummed. 

Toni froze as she realised she was discussing her mother with the man that would one day put his hand around her throat and choke the life out of her. Her hand shook enough that her fork clattered against her plate before she unceremoniously dropped it and hid her hands beneath the table, clenching them into fists. She took a deep breath, hacked her brain with Extremis and forced away the reaction. It wasn’t fast enough for Bucky not to notice, but thankfully he didn’t say anything. 

“She was. When she chose to cook.” She answered quietly and maybe some part of her hoped that knowing that about Maria Stark might somehow stop the Winter Soldier in the future and save her life. But it wouldn’t. She knew it wouldn’t. Because he would never know that it was Maria Stark that she was talking about. 

“I’m sorry for your loss.” He said softly and  _ sincerely _ in a way that most other people had never managed. 

She bit her lip hard enough that it bled, trying to force herself to get over the incongruity. He didn’t know what he would be forced to do in the future. He didn’t know that he was the one that would take her mother from her. 

“It happened a long time ago.” She said eventually. Even though it hadn’t happened yet, technically. Fuck time travel; it was the worst idea she’d ever had. No surprise that she’d had it while drunk off her ass. It was a miracle that the device she’d made had actually worked instead of blowing up in her face. 

He nodded understandingly, then gently changed the subject to something more lighthearted. She allowed the topic change, was grateful for it. When dinner was done, he cleared the table and started the washing up, insisting that because she cooked for him, the least he could do was clean up. She almost wound up laughing hysterically. This was a man the same age as her father. She tried to remember Howard cleaning the dishes even once in her life and she couldn’t. It was  _ women’s work _ . 

Maybe she just wasn’t being fair. Maybe Howard and Steve were just douchebags and she shouldn’t judge all of the people from the forties in the same light. Or maybe he was just trying too hard. Not that it mattered anyway. She wasn’t going to be here much longer. With the arrival of the supplies today, she’d be able to finish her prototype. Providing that the diagnostics came back within parameters, she’d be back in her own time by the end of the week. 

She dried the dishes next to Bucky, steadfastly ignoring the way that he protested and tried to make her go sit. She also ignored the way that he drifted closer to her, until he finished and drained the sink then boxed her in against the the counter. 

His fingers wound up curled around the end of her braid as he watched her intently. “Can I kiss you, doll?” He asked. As if it weren’t a sure thing. As if he didn’t expect to just fall into bed with her because she’d kissed him earlier. 

“You’d better.” She found herself saying, earning a cocky smirk from him. 

He was a good kisser. He’d clearly had a lot of experience. He was definitely living up to the legend of the prolific skirt chaser Howard had always praised. It was just the right combination of pressure and moisture while his hands slid slowly down her sides to rest over her hips. Her own fingers found their way up into his hair before she twisted her hand suddenly and Bucky let out a loud groan. She’d always been a bit of a hair puller.

He pulled back, eyes half-lidded and pupils blown wide in desire. He was gorgeous. He always had been. Even when he’d been scruffy and long-haired with a murder strut and a metal prosthetic, he’d been gorgeous. 

“What do you want?” She asked quietly. She knew what he actually wanted, or at least she suspected. He wanted a whole host of things that she would never be able to give him. But if there was something else in this moment that she could give, she would. 

“ _ Anything you want. _ ” He answered immediately, voice low and hoarse with wanting. 

Not ‘anything she would give him’, which would have been a fairly standard response. She’d heard that one before plenty of times. No. This was anything that  _ she _ wanted. 

She frowned slightly, then tightened her hand in his hair and pulled. He submitted easily, head tilting back at her guidance, throat bared to her without hesitation as he watched her with a hooded gaze. 

She stared, eyes widening in surprise. For all that she liked to take control in the bedroom, it had always been a constant struggle. The men she had been with had always considered her a rare object that they would be able to possess, even if only for a short time. If she wanted control, she had to fight for it. She’d had to fight for everything in her life. Nothing had ever come easily, for all that she’d been born into wealth. No one had ever gifted themselves to her like this before. No one had ever simply  _ let _ her take the reins. 

She licked her lips nervously before regaining her composure. She noticed the way that Bucky’s pulse was visibly hammering in his throat and it restored her confidence. She pulled on his hair a little further, pulling his head back almost painfully, but he remained pliant in her grasp. 

Fuck Hydra. 

Fuck them to the ends of the earth. They had taken this amazing man and this beautiful gift and they had  _ ruined  _ it. Mere days before she’d fallen into a drunken rage and built a time machine, she’d managed to locate the Winter Soldier’s file in the SHIELDRA leak. It had taken them  _ years _ to break him and bring him under control.  _ Years _ of torture and pain to get a man who got off on being controlled to submit. 

She wondered how hard that had been for him. She wondered how on earth he had even persevered. She wasn’t a stranger to torture. She had been in a similar situation in Afghanistan, and she had cracked within two months. Two fucking months before she agreed to do anything they wanted just so long as they stopped showing up at her cot at night, so that they stopped dragging her out and drowning her in the middle of the desert, so that they’d stop beating her until she could barely move anymore. 

“You’re gorgeous.” She said softly and she really wasn’t certain if she was talking about his physical appearance or his strength of will. Both, probably. 

“Nah. That’s you, doll.” He said, his voice a low rumble. 

She watched the muscles in his throat work as he spoke and wondered why she’d never found that sexy before. Whatever. This was clearly a new kink of hers. She’d have to look into it more later.

Her free hand came up to the middle of his chest and she pushed him backwards toward the bed on the other side of the loft, her other hand still tight in his hair. When she reached the bed, she pushed him down on it then stepped back, watching him watch her as she thought about what  _ she _ wanted. 

“Hmmm.” She tapped her lip thoughtfully then began pulling her clothes off. It was freeing being able to do this after so many years of hiding her scars. She could strip with no fear of her disfigurations ending up on the six o’clock news or in a tabloid magazine. She pulled off her shirt and tossed her bra at his face before letting her pants and panties drop. Bucky’s pupils had dilated so wide with lust that his irises had practically been eclipsed as he watched her hungrily. “What I want, huh?” 

She flopped down onto the bed beside him, laying on her back. They weren’t touching and he didn’t move at all, waiting for permission. A smile curled across her lips as she stared up at the ceiling. 

“I want you to use your mouth.” 

Bucky let out a groan that almost sounded like he was in pain, but a moment later he was rolling over, resting his weight on his elbow as he hovered over her. He kissed her briefly, then he went about using his mouth, starting from the underside of her jaw and down her neck, over her chest, pausing to spent a not inconsiderable amount of time on her breasts. 

She wound up twisting her fingers back into his hair and pushing him down to exactly where she wanted him. And damn if it hadn’t been worth the wait. She should have expected that he would be good at this with his reputation and how pretty his mouth was. He did it just how she liked it, with lots of tongue work and minimal suction. It was just perfect. 

He brought her to the edge more quickly than she’d anticipated. It felt like they had only just started when moments later she was already teetering over the abyss. She pulled his hair harder than she probably should have, but he only redoubled his efforts and a moment later she was hurtling over the edge, back arched and toes curling into the blankets. 

He pulled back for a moment, panting slightly as he watched her come down before he went back to his assigned task and began pressing open mouthed kisses to her thighs and down to her knees and calves, and onward to the soles of her feet, worshiping her from head to toe. She watched him wide-eyed, neither of them saying anything until she eventually relented and pulled him back up her body to kiss him properly on the mouth, still tasting herself on him. 

“Clearly had a lot of practice at that.” She teased, finally pressing her lips to the throat she had been admiring earlier, using her teeth to leave a little mark on him.

He actually blushed and shrugged a little uncomfortably. “I’d be happy to practice on you any time, honey.” 

She chuckled and pushed him onto his back on the bed, straddling over him. She was buck ass naked and he was still fully clothed. In most scenarios that would make her feel vulnerable, like some kind of object, but it was the opposite here. She was the only one of them with the luxury of being free from her clothes. He was still trapped and confined, the bulge in his pants noticeably tight. 

She hummed disinterestedly as she gently ran her fingers down over his chest and over aforementioned bulge, her touch so light it might as well have not been there. He strained toward her hand for a moment, frustration evident when she moved away every time he misbehaved, before he finally gave up and collapsed back on the bed, eyes closed and body relaxed. 

“Good.” She praised, then smirked at the way his dick twitched in response. 

She was still deciding what she wanted to do with him now. She could be greedy and ride him again, chase a second orgasm before he’d even attained his first. But he’d given her a gift. His very presence, his obvious surrender, the pliant way he was even still awaiting orders were all gifts and she felt the need to pay him back in kind. 

She reached down, fingers working with the leather of his belt, unlatching it and sliding it free from his pants with little resistance. “Sit up.” She ordered, belt in hand. 

He did as he was told, as she knew he would, then took his arms and pinned them behind his back, using the belt to keep them that way. The tension that was immediately apparent in his shoulders and jaw sent up a ton of red flags and all at once she remembered that he had already been captured once. Steve’s heroic debut had been to rescue Bucky from Hydra experimentation. 

“Hey, is this too much?” She asked, making sure to look him in the eye. 

“No.” He said quickly, probably too quickly. 

She placed both hands on his cheeks, running her thumb over sharp cheekbones as she watched him intently. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, Bucky. You have to tell me if I go too far or if you don’t like something.” 

“I know. It’s fine, Toni. It’s just my stupid head -”

“It’s not stupid.” She cut him off immediately, already reaching for the belt to release his arms. She had struggled with her PTSD for the last decade and she would be damned if she let him call that stupid. “It’s not. It happens and it’s fucked up, but it’s not stupid.” 

His hands came up to caress her face, watching her carefully before drawing her in for a gentle kiss. When they separated, he rested his forehead against hers. “You’re beautiful, Toni. Inside and out. You’re gorgeous, so smart, so kind. I’m lucky you even look my way. Thank you.” 

She shrugged under the praise. “We’ve all got our hang ups.” She said it like it didn’t matter, like she wasn’t more broken than even he thought he was.

He caught the implication of it though and he watched her carefully for a moment before his gaze dropped to the mess of scars the littered her chest. And she couldn’t have that, because if he asked she had no idea what she would tell him. So, distract, distract, distract. 

“Speaking of which, I was going to do something for you.” She said, pressing her lips to the side of his throat. “Something I hardly ever do. But if you touch me at all during it, I’ll be more likely to gut you than get you off, understood?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He agreed, though there was a lingering uncertainty in his eyes. 

When she shuffled off his lap and slid to the floor between his legs he let out a sound like he had been sucker punched. His hand came up and moved toward her hair before he snatched it back and placed them both behind his back. 

“Sorry.” He said sheepishly. 

She hesitated, fingers curling into fists at her sides as she looked up at him. “I’m serious, Bucky. No hands, no hips.” 

He nodded again. “I promise.” 

She bit her lip, then let out an unsteady breath. Fuck, she hadn’t done this since . . . since when? Bruce? Before all of that had fallen apart. Yeah, it had definitely been Bruce, which had been years ago. Before that . . . well, she wasn’t going to think about that. She’d made the decision a long time ago to not let what had happened to her in Afghanistan ever impact her sex life and for the most part she had succeeded. She wasn’t going to let that ruin this for Bucky. 

This was a gift that she was giving back to him in the most comparable way she could think of. He had made himself vulnerable for her, so she would do the same. Especially because this would all be over soon. It would only be a few more days before she would be back in her own time.

She met his eyes one more time, feeling a shiver race down her spine at the intensity of his gaze, a heady mix of anticipation and muted danger because, Winter Soldier or not, Bucky was still a master sniper and he had her in his sights. Well then, she always had worked best under pressure.


	6. Collapse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And it all falls down ...

Bucky was on cloud nine as he made his way back to base. The sun had already risen, but he’d made good on his previous promise of making Toni breakfast, which she had thanked him for most enthusiastically. He felt his neck heat up just at the memory. God, he was in love with her. She was one of a kind and he knew already that there would never be anyone else for him. He found himself rubbing his fingers over the ring in the lining of his coat again. It might still seem too soon, but if he somehow scrounged up the courage, then maybe he would ask her tonight. 

His good mood was dampened when he found Steve waiting for him outside of their barracks, arms crossed over his chest and a serious frown on his face. He felt his heart plummet into his gut as he paused in front of his friend. 

“Zola?” He asked. If that monster had managed to slip past them while he’d been stepping out with Toni, he wouldn’t know how to feel. 

Steve shook his head slightly. “Come with me.” 

Well that wasn’t ominous.

He was led into the command tent where Colonel Phillips and Howard Stark were already waiting. Sitting in the middle of the colonel’s desk sat a device about the size of a person’s hand. It looked . . . familiar.

Bucky frowned as he looked around at the other men in the room, as he looked to Steve, who was standing straight with his hands behind his back and his chest puffed out, not looking at him. That probably wasn’t a good sign.

“What’s going on, sir?” He asked cautiously. 

“Sergeant, does this device look familiar?” The colonel asked. 

“It looks like my girl’s work. Where did you get it?” He answered obediently. 

“Captain Rogers brought it to our attention last night.” Colonel Phillips answered with a heavy sigh. 

Bucky turned his disbelieving gaze on Steve, on his damn  _ brother _ . “You stole from her?” He demanded. Steve had only been in Toni’s workshop for a matter of minutes and the first thing he’d thought to do was to steal from her?

“Son, I need you to sit down.” The colonel said, gesturing to the chair sitting across from his desk. 

He took a steadying breath, feeling dread beginning to crawl up his throat as he did what he was told. He waited patiently for someone to tell him what the hell was going on. He was a sniper, waiting was kind of his forte, but hell if he didn’t just want to shake them all and demand answers. 

“How’d you meet this woman?” Phillips asked. 

“At a bar on leave a couple months back.” He answered. “What the hell is going on?”

“Do you know what this does?” Howard Stark suddenly asked, gesturing toward the stolen tech on the desk. 

He shook his head, because he didn’t. Toni hadn’t explained what she was working on. She’d kept it a secret and he hadn’t felt like it was his place to pry. 

“This technology is years ahead of anything else I’ve ever seen.” Howard explained. Except that it didn’t explain anything.

“Yeah, she’s a smart cookie.” He nodded cautiously. 

“Buck,” Steve said softly, like he was about to break some bad news, “who else do we know with highly advanced technology? The only people with more advanced technology than Mr. Stark?” 

He felt like the floor dropped out from under him and he turned to glare at Steve. “You’re wrong.” He all but snarled. “Toni isn’t Hydra!” 

“Sergeant, I need to know what you’ve told her.” Colonel Phillips sighed. 

“Nothing!” He protested. 

The colonel said nothing for a moment before he sighed again and slid a file folder across the desk toward him. Bucky stared at it. He didn’t want to open it. He was in love with Toni. He couldn’t fathom any universe where she was in league with Hydra. She had been so perfect to him. She was so gentle and kind even when she took control. He’d already been subjected to Hydra’s control and the two situations were in no way similar. 

He closed his eyes, letting out a shaky breath before reaching for the folder. He flipped it open, finding a handful of photographs and surveillance reports. He flipped through the photos and found that she was never in any compromising situations in any of them. Most of them simply seemed like candid shots as she went about her business. 

“So you’ve been watching her. You’ve got no proof of any connections with Hydra.” He said stubbornly. He wasn’t going to give up on Toni without undeniable proof. At this point, she’d have to be caught sitting down to dinner with Zola and the Red Skull for him to believe that she was Hydra.

“Our first records of a woman matching Antonia Carbonell’s description start just under a year ago. She was caught trying to cross a checkpoint onto the front lines. A week later, she was caught trying to cross another one. Two weeks later, she was caught again, and the officer in charge found her suspicious enough to put under surveillance.” Phillips narrated. 

“Reports from her surveillance detail noted the way that she seemed to be searching for Captain America. And then, lo and behold, she found him. And you, the captain’s famous skirt chasing best friend, and she got in close and wrapped you around her finger.” 

“That’s not true.” He said numbly. It  _ sounded _ bad. He didn’t want to believe it. He glanced down at the folder in his hands, at the pages and pages of surveillance reports, and was finding it harder and harder to deny. Had she really only approached him because he was Steve’s friend?

“And then,” Phillips continued, “mere days after she makes contact with you, her behaviour changes entirely. No more trying to get to the front lines. She moves only when we take back territory, always moving eastward, and begins buying up all of the raw materials she can get her hands on. Almost like she’d gotten what she came for after she met you. So I’m going to need to know what you told her.” 

“Nothing.” He protested. He had  _ always _ been discreet. Even under torture and experimentation he hadn’t given up Allied secrets, not that they had asked him all that many questions. 

“Son, I know you don’t want to believe it, but this is more important than that. What did you talk about with Miss Carbonell?” Phillips insisted.

Bucky let out a heavy breath and rubbed his hands over his face. His heart was breaking in his chest. Had it really only been this morning, not even two hours ago now, since he’d had Toni in his arms, since he’d told her he loved her and she’d responded with a sweet kiss to his lips. Had it all been a lie? Was this why she’d been so adamant that it wouldn’t work out? Did that even make sense? If she’d been assigned to draw him in, she wouldn’t be playing hard to get, would she?

“Steve, did you know about this?” He asked instead. 

“No. Not until I brought back that device.” Steve assured him, as if that made it any better. 

He swallowed thickly, then glanced down at the photos. God, Toni was so gorgeous and she’d looked at him in a way that no one had since Steve had gotten all big and strong. And they were right. Fuck, they were right, she’d come up next to him all red lips and confident posture and she’d reeled him in. She hadn’t looked twice at Steve. She’d targeted him. 

His mouth felt dry and his tongue felt about two sizes too big to fit in his mouth, but he started retelling everything he could remember about the night he’d met Toni. He tried to do it neutrally, tried to tell them about this amazing woman who had looked at him without her gaze ever straying Steve’s way, without expressing his emotions at all, but it was hard and his hands were shaking within minutes. 

He could tell by the unsatisfied expressions on Phillips’ and Stark’s faces that there was nothing she could have gleaned from him that could be considered sensitive. After all, they hadn’t talked about Steve or the Commandos at all. Fuck, they’d spent most of the night debating the best hamburgers they’d ever had. 

“There’s nothing else? Take a moment and think, Sergeant.” 

He shook his head. There was nothing. 

“What about last night?” Steve asked. 

Bucky shook his head. “No. We don’t talk about my work. We never have. I sent her letters, but I know better than to let sensitive details into my letters. She didn’t get anything from me.” 

“We already know that the letters didn’t contain anything sensitive.” Philips sighed, which meant that they’d been reading his damn letters. It meant that that damn courier was actually a spy.

“What about you?” Stark asked.

Bucky’s head snapped up and icy fury shot through him. Was he really under suspicion of allying with Hydra? After everything they’d done to him? “What  _ about _ me?” He snarled. 

“Did you get any information out of her?” Stark elaborated. 

Bucky started to shake his head but paused and grit his teeth. How was it possible that she’d given him more information than she’d gotten out of him? What kind of spy did that?

“She said she was from Malibu and that she’d be returning there soon. That once her current project was done that she’d be gone.” He revealed. 

The other men in the room all shared a glance before the colonel cursed under his breath. “We need to stop her. Captain, I’m dispatching you and the commandos to bring her in. We want her alive and unharmed, if possible. Any unfamiliar technology needs to be gathered up and brought to Stark for inspection.”

“Yes, sir.” Steve said immediately. 

“Sergeant, are you impartial enough to participate in this mission?” The colonel asked bluntly. 

He hesitated for a moment. Part of him wanted to scream  _ No! _ at the top of his lungs. Because he’d loved her! He’d fucking gone all in on her and it had all been a lie. She was an enemy agent and had targeted him specifically for some unknown purpose. He had a grotesque feeling of dread in his chest as he let it sink in more and more. 

Why would they target him? What made him special aside from being Steve’s friend? Because she’d shown no interest in Steve, so there must have been a reason, and the only thing he could think of was Zola looming over him and dozens of painful injections searing through his veins. What if she’d been sent to retrieve their experiment?

“Yes, sir.” He said through grit teeth. Was Toni working for Zola? He had to find out for sure. He had to  _ know _ . He wanted to hear it from her lips and he’d never get to do that if he didn’t get his shit together right now and prove that he wasn’t compromised.

“Then suit up and move out. And be careful. She’s shown proficiency with a firearm in the past, and god only knows what this technology is capable of.” Phillips warned. 

Bucky nodded numbly as he rose from his seat, setting aside the folder detailing all of Toni’s suspicious behaviour. “Yes, sir.” He said, saluting crisply. 

He exited the tent with Steve, feeling like the world was crushing in on him from every direction. But there was nowhere to go but forward. He’d get to the bottom of this, and if that broke his heart, at least it would be better to find out now, rather than after he’d proposed.

*****

Toni was more relaxed than she could remember being in months or maybe years as she made her way to her warehouse. Unfortunately, her good mood evaporated within minutes of getting the lights on. She’d always had an eidetic memory, but Extremis had enhanced that into more of a mental inventory system. She no longer absentmindedly set things aside somewhere then couldn’t find them when she went to retrieve them later. No, everything was kept up with a logged location tag in her computer-brain. And something was missing. 

She felt a cold shot of dread seep through her. Someone had been in here and had  _ taken _ her tech. Her hands shook slightly as she rushed through the warehouse, taking a full inventory as quickly as possible. It was only one component that was missing and it wasn’t even an diagnostic one, but it was still her tech. It was her fucking 21st century tech and it was missing in the 1940s. She  _ knew _ how dangerous that could be. 

Fuck. She was compromised. She didn’t stop to consider what she was doing. Whoever had taken it would be back for more once they realised what they’d gotten their hands on and she couldn’t be here when they did. She wasn’t gentle as she snatched up the various components of her time machine and threw them into a large crate. She was packed up in a matter of minutes and called up the armor. She had nowhere to go right now, but she could at least get her tech out. 

She used her repulsors to float up to the ceiling, bending back a piece of metal paneling from the ceiling to get out on top of the roof. She left her goods there, where there was no way to get up there, then folded the metal back into place. She’d always had dozens of contingency plans floating in her mind, but she really hadn’t considered actually having to use them. Not like this. 

This was one of her nightmares. Once again her tech had fallen into someone else’s hands and she had no idea who or how. She needed to rectify that. She took in a shaky breath and thought for a moment before nodding to herself and dropping down onto the unsteady scaffolding that had been there since she’d started renting the warehouse. 

One benefit of the nanotech armor was that it weighed less, so she wasn’t worried about the scaffolding collapsing under the weight of the suit. She used the retroreflectors to become invisible and settled in to wait for her thief to come back for more. God help her if it had fallen into Hydra’s hands. 

Go fucking figure. She’d actually been having a good day. She and Bucky had had a good morning and she’d savoured it, knowing that whatever was between them was swiftly coming to an end. And then this had to happen. 

She didn’t have to wait long for her thief to visit again. 

She didn’t know why she was surprised. She didn’t know how she’d allowed Steve to hurt her again. She should have known. Steve had never trusted her. She’d always thought it was due to something that SHIELD had told him, but maybe he just didn’t like her. Maybe he’d never like her. 

He ducked into the entrance of the warehouse, shield already out and ready to beat her back into the ground. She felt her anxiety spike, but used Extremis to hack the reaction out of her. She didn’t have time for her brain to drag up all of her old traumas. She needed to focus. 

She remained completely still, invisibly perched above them as the rest of the Howling Commandos fanned in behind Steve, guns up like they were raiding an enemy base. Her eyes snapped to Bucky, watching him like a hawk as he trailed into the warehouse last. His face was pale and his gun was gripped tightly in his hands, but he wasn’t pointing it around the corners of the room like the rest of his buddies. 

She thought back to this morning, to the almost reverent expression he’d had on his face as he’d kissed her awake. What had changed? What had they said to him to make him agree to raid her warehouse?

“Fuck!” One of the other commandos cursed. She thought that he was Dugan, but she’d never paid as much attention to the rest of the Howling Commandos as she had to the Brooklyn boys. “She’s gone.” 

They all turned to look at Bucky, but he was just staring blankly at her empty workstations. He looked like he’d seen a ghost, or like all of his worst fears had just been realised and it closed like a vice around her heart. As much as she’d told herself that she was ready to leave, that there was nothing left for her here, she still cared about him. 

“Where would she go?” Steve demanded. 

Bucky just shrugged. “I don’t know. She’s always moving.” He breathed. 

One of the other commandos turned to look at the sergeant with a deep frown on his face. “You didn’t warn her we were coming, did you, Barnes?”

Bucky looked like he’d been slapped as he looked around at his comrades in disbelief. “No. How could I have? I was with you guys the whole time.” 

“Who knows. With how advanced your Hydra girlfriend’s tech is supposed to be, maybe she built you something. Or maybe she’s tracking you.” 

“Enough.” Steve snapped. “Bucky’s been with us this whole time. There’s no way he could have told Carbonell we were onto her.” 

Toni felt like she was frozen. She felt like those last moments before she’d died in Siberia, when she’d felt the ice creeping through her veins. They thought that she was  _ Hydra _ ? How the fuck had they come to that conclusion? 

Though that was just typical, wasn’t it? Steve had suspicions about her being Hydra in the 21st century too, hadn’t he? Wasn’t that why he hadn’t contacted her when he’d unilaterally decided to burn SHIELD to the ground?

“Where was she staying? It doesn’t look like she was sleeping here.” One of the commandos asked. 

Bucky shook his head, still looking lost. “Above the butcher shop.” He answered. 

She watched him and wasn’t sure if she should feel hurt by his betrayal or not. Whatever they’d done to sell her as a Hydra agent had clearly been effective. If she’d found out that someone close to her had been an enemy all along, she would sure as fuck have been burning every bridge between them. After all, that was what had happened between her and Stane. 

But it still hurt. Because  _ she _ knew that it wasn’t true. And she’d let herself care about this man that had looked at her like she’d hung the moon and all the stars. She could see how the false accusations against her had hurt him and she wanted nothing more than to reveal herself and clear her name. 

But she wasn’t stupid enough to do that, because Steve was here looking for a fight and he had always been the type to punch first and ask questions later. And while Extremis was running through her veins and the Iron Queen armor rested in the hollows of her bones, she still wasn’t stupid enough to get into a fight with him again. She recognised it as fear, but she could do nothing to stop it. 

Fear was irrational and even Extremis couldn’t save her from it. Sure, she could hack her body and eliminate the physical manifestations of her fear, but she couldn’t rid herself of her mental hang ups. She was afraid of Steve Rogers and with good reason. She had experienced what he was capable of and had already died once at his hands. She had no intention of doing the same thing again.

“Let’s move out.” Steve said grimly, already heading to the door. 

She watched the commandos fall in around him, just like she remembered doing the same, once upon a time. Though she had never been as much of a spineless yes-man as the good Captain had wanted her to be. 

Bucky lingered behind, looking around with an open expression of disbelief, followed by sad resignation. He stepped forward, moving toward the work station they had lingered by the previous night. He pulled a knife off of his belt and cut something out of his jacket before leaving it on the table and walking out. 

Toni frowned as she watched him leave, but she desperately made herself wait in place for another hour just in case they came back to secure the scene and look for further clues to her whereabouts. When no one came, she finally allowed herself to float down from the scaffolding to see what Bucky had left for her, expecting another letter or something similar. 

It wasn’t a letter.

She felt her knees give out on her when she saw the delicate gold ring with a solitaire ruby set in the middle. The ring was simple and looked old, like it was maybe an heirloom. And it was in her colours. It matched the earrings that she had been wearing for years. 

Why did Bucky have a ring?

Why why why? She had told him not to get his hopes up. She had told him that she was leaving, that there was no future for them. Why the fuck was he carrying around a ring? Why a ring in her colours? 

She reached out to touch it, but drew her hand back. Bucky had left it behind. He’d given up on the idea. Did she have any right to touch it now? Would she have ever have had any right? 

She was almost fifty years old and she had never been with anyone who had been serious enough about her to even want to propose. Sure, when she’d been younger there had been plenty of assholes who thought that the easiest way to gain access to her fortune was to put a ring on her finger, but she had chased them off pretty quickly. None of them had been serious about  _ her _ . 

But Bucky didn’t know about her fortune. He didn’t know she was a Stark. He didn’t know about her fame or the Iron Queen armor. She had barely given him any reasons to like her, let alone fall in love with her and want to spend the rest of his life with her. And yet somehow there was a ring sitting on this table. 

She stared at it, and she grieved for a life that she would never live. She had thought there was no harm in letting this thing with Bucky go on. She had told him that it wasn’t a long term thing. She hadn’t thought he was this serious about it.

Why did he have to be serious about it?


	7. Falling: Redux

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The reunion isn't what either of them expected.

Bucky spent the next day in a daze. Then the news came in that they’d confirmed that Zola was on the move and his focus narrowed to that. He didn’t have time to be heartbroken. He had vengeance to take care of. 

Meanwhile, a small part of him was just praying that he didn’t find Toni on the train as well. He couldn’t face that. He tried not to imagine the mocking sneer that would be on her face if that were the case. Her and Zola laughing it up about how stupid and naive he was.

He tried not to, but sometimes he couldn’t help but wonder if she’d been laughing at him this entire time. She’d seemed so genuine, but it was obvious now that she’d been keeping things from him. It should have put up more red flags when she’d told him her project was a secret. He should have questioned her, but he’d been so taken in by her that he hadn’t even considered that she might be more than she seemed.

He forced his thoughts away from her. He was on a mission. He was about to have his revenge. He didn’t have time to worry about how he’d been taken in by a spy. They’d been moving hard through the wilderness from their drop off point all day before reaching their destination on a ridge overlooking the railroad. Steve had some ridiculous plan to slide down a telegraph line onto a moving train. Bucky was not looking forward to it, but he was going to do it because Zola was on the train and he had unfinished business with the Hydra bastard. 

He glanced around at the other commandos as they waited for the train. Since his involvement with Toni had been exposed, they’d been looking at him with a mixture of suspicion and pity. Mostly it was pity, and he couldn’t quite tell if he would have preferred the suspicion or not. Not that Stevie was letting any doubting comments slide. If nothing else, his best friend could always be counted on to get into a fight over someone else’s behalf.

He grimaced and faced away from them all, ostensibly keeping watching for the train. He just didn’t want to deal with it. Part of him wanted to go back to a time when he hadn’t known a woman like Toni, but the memory or her had been keeping him going for months now and he didn’t know what he was going to cling to now that that was no longer an option. Going through this war with no hope for the future was almost guaranteed to kill him. 

He heard a rumble in the distance and found himself gripping his rifle more tightly. The train was coming.  _ Zola _ was coming. He was so close to having his revenge. He remembered how helpless he had felt strapped down to that damn table, with Zola’s smarmy smile looking down at him and taking clinical notes. It had been clear that the man hadn’t even considered him human. 

Bucky would pay him the same courtesy. He didn’t think that Zola was human either. Zola was a fucking monster. Zola was no more human than the damn Red Skull. Taking him out would be doing all of humanity a favour. 

It was time.

By some miracle, they all managed to make it onto the train in one piece. Unfortunately, things started going downhill from there. There were more Hydra agents on board than they had been told and, as always with Hydra, their advanced weaponry made them formidable and they knew that they were trapped on the train with nowhere to go. 

Things started going sideways almost from the start. He got separated from Steve, then by the time they got back together, it hardly mattered. The side of the train was blown out by some advanced Hydra gun and he fell right out of it, barely managing to grab onto a warped railing as he dangled off of the side of the train like a piece of fishing bait.

Steve couldn’t reach him. 

God knew he was trying, but they were too far apart and he could tell that it was futile. There were still Hydra agents on the train and Zola was still at large, but Steve was hanging halfway out of the train trying to reach him and damn it, didn’t the punk see that it wasn’t going to work? Of course he didn’t. He was all “‘til the end of the line” and Bucky couldn’t tell if it was sad or ironic that he was going to meet his end on a train when that was the motto underlying their friendship. 

He felt the railing shift under his weight and could see the realisation cross Steve’s face. The helpless horror was something he never wanted to witness on anyone’s face, let alone Steve’s, but it was there; this was happening. This was where he died. There was nothing he could do about it. No matter how much he wanted to live, it didn’t matter. He couldn’t save himself and Steve couldn’t save him either. 

The railing shifted again, dropping another few inches, and the sudden jerk of his weight on it did the rest of the job. All he knew in the next moment was that he was screaming and the train was racing away, taking Steve with it and it was the end. It was the goddamn end. 

He tried to catch his breath, tried to brace for impact, tried to do all sorts of things as he just plummeted through the air. At one point he wondered if the ravine didn’t have an end, because surely he should have already hit the ground. He’d never been afraid of heights before, but he was now realising that he’d probably never been this far from the ground before. 

He tried to stop screaming, but the moment he did he noticed something else racing toward him from above and his only thought was that Steve had fallen too. But that didn’t make sense and Steve didn’t wear red. 

The figure gained on him and some part of him realised that that meant that it was propelled, but mostly he was just overwhelmed. A second later the figure was slamming into him, all hard plates of metal and a muted whine of machinery. 

“Shit.” The figure snarled as it flipped them over, putting the armoured figure between him and the ground. Then, even more unbelievably, the armour just started slipping away, revealing skin and clothes beneath. 

Before that process managed to complete, they hit the ground and every part of his body exploded in pain. They bounced and he rolled off his rescuer, sliding further down the ravine before he came to settle against a stunted pine tree. 

He was alive.

He stared up at the snowy boughs of the tree above him in wide-eyed wonder. He was alive. Somehow, against all odds, he was still alive. Someone had saved him. Someone had somehow flew some kind of contraption down the ravine to save him. 

His training kicked in a few minutes later and he began a self-assessment, wiggling his toes, moving his booted feet, tensing his legs before moving them and lifting his arms to pat his chest before daring to move his neck. He ached everywhere, but somehow he didn’t seem injured. He’d have bruises and his shoulder twinged in a way that suggested it might be dislocated, or might have tried to dislocate but didn’t quite manage it. 

He sat up slowly and his head spun enough that he needed to rest there for a few more minutes before he dared to get to his feet. He looked around and found his rifle in the snowbank nearby. Somehow it still looked functional too. He picked it up, hanging the strap over his good shoulder as he slowly picked his way back up the ravine to the figure that had saved him. 

It was a woman, he recognised as he got closer. Most of the armour had disappeared, leaving only boots, gloves and helmet intact. There was a lot of blood pooling beneath her body from where a tree branch had run her through, staining the snow beneath her a soupy red. She wasn’t moving. 

“Damn it.” He huffed, dropping into the snow beside her, reaching to pull the helmet away and check her pulse. He froze, heart icing over in his chest as the helmet clattered out of his suddenly numb fingers.

It was Toni.

****

She returned to consciousness with a plethora of internal error messages pinging her awake. Shattered spine. Nerve damage. Organ damage. Internal bleeding. Broken bones. Severe concussion. Impalement. Multiple lacerations. 

She couldn’t feel it. She couldn’t feel anything other than the cold on her nose and lips. It awoke something visceral in her and she couldn’t think. She couldn’t  _ move.  _ Oh god, was this what Rhodey felt like? Was this what he was still feeling like? There was a blaring sort of  _ wrongness _ that was taking over everything. But she couldn’t breath either because her lung had been punctured by something and she couldn’t  _ move. _

She panicked. She couldn’t breath. She couldn’t move. But Extremis wouldn’t let her die. If she stayed like this, her body would just decide that whatever was inside of her deserved to be a part of her. She couldn’t let that happen. 

She fluttered her eyes open and found Bucky crouched over her. He had a conflicted expression on his face and she really couldn’t deal with it right now. She licked her lips and tried to make her voice work. “Pull it out.” She wheezed, flicking her eyes to whatever it was that was impaling her. 

“You’re not supposed to do that.” He answered. But it wasn’t like he was treating her injuries either.  

“Just do it.” She insisted. He didn’t know about Extremis. As far as he knew, her wounds were fatal. There was no point in trying to save her life when they were so far from civilisation.

He pursed his lips together but relented after a few moments. “I’m going to move you. Pull you off of it.” 

Yeah, you weren’t supposed to do that either, but she nodded anyway. Or she tried to nod. But she couldn’t fucking  _ move _ . “‘kay.” She agreed after another bout of panic shot through her because she couldn’t even manage to nod. 

He cradled her gingerly and carefully lifted her. He’d clearly expected her to scream or show her pain and was disturbed when his actions were met with silence. Well, silence aside from the whistling sounds her lungs were making now that they had a hole in them that was no longer impeded. 

He set her down a step away and gently brushed her hair out of her face, watching her carefully. “It’s okay.” She wheezed as she gave Extremis the go ahead to start repairing her lungs and spine as priority, because she couldn’t fucking deal with not being able to feel her own body. This was a hundred times worse than waking up on the table in Afghanistan and not being able to move because she was strapped down during open heart surgery.

“No it’s not.” Bucky choked out and there were tears in his eyes. 

“Just give me a minute.” She grunted, already feeling the fire of Extremis in her veins. Extremis had been created to grow back limbs, surely a spinal injury was no big deal. Sure. No big deal. 

Fuck, this had to be karma. This was what she got for altering the timeline. She’d been doing so damn well in not impacting major events. And then there was that stupid ring and she couldn’t let him fall, could she? No. No damn way. She’d always been willing to put herself in harm’s way for the people she cared about. 

She’d barely made it on time. She should have gotten to him before he fell from the train, but she’d spent so much time dilly-dallying as she obsessed about the ring that she’d missed the deployment of the Howling Commandos and had had to race to find them. And by the time she’d gotten in range, Bucky was already falling. By the time she’d caught him, there was no time to slow their descent and all she could do was break his fall. 

Bucky gave her a sad smile and Toni focussed instead on his arm. His left arm. It was still there. It didn’t even look injured. In fact, he hardly looked injured at all. She had succeeded at the cost of her own health. It was probably worth it. 

She felt it the second that her spine began stitching itself back together, because sensation came back like a raging inferno.  _ Everything  _ was in agony. She couldn’t help the sudden gasp, or the way the scream tore out of her throat. 

“What?! What’s wrong?” Bucky asked quickly, hands fluttering over her uselessly. 

She couldn’t answer. Extremis was a fire in her veins, in her bones, and there was no relief in sight. Everything was agony. She only realised now that she should have probably left the spinal injury for last. But it was only pain. She knew pain well. She could deal with pain better than she could deal with the panic that had been eating away at her from not being able to feel her body. 

It felt like it lasted forever and she distinctly hated that her brain worked like a computer now, because she knew exactly how long this was taking, was able to watch every second and minute tick by and she didn’t have the luxury of passing out. She wouldn’t risk it while her healing protocols were going. Her Extremis had been perfected with numerous safeties in place to prevent the combustion of Killian’s victims. While it made it more stable, it meant that she healed much more slowly. It took almost seven hours of torturous agony before she felt like she could cope with the pain enough to stop screaming. 

She panted tiredly, eyes drooping with exhaustion, but there was no time to rest. Bucky was back at her side within seconds of the silence. He probably thought she had given up the ghost if the way his shaky fingers were hovering over her pulse were any indication. She reached out and patted his hand comfortingly, the pain in her arms had faded to a bone deep ache that she assumed she would be feeling for days. She had no idea. She had never been injured since she’d had Extremis, especially not this seriously. 

“What are you?” Bucky asked quietly. 

She almost came out with her usual, cocky ‘genius, billionaire, sex symbol, philanthropist’ but she doubted that would win her any points. Besides, how many times had she asked herself that question since she died and woke up with Extremis. Could she really still count herself as human?

“I don’t even know anymore.” She admit. 

His lips pressed together unhappily. “Are you Hydra?” 

She let out a bitter laugh but it hurt her chest. Everything was still sore even if it had already been stitched together. “No.” 

He grit his teeth and it was clear that he didn’t believe her. Again, she wondered what they had said to him to make her out to be such a villain. These people didn’t even know her and they were shitting on her. 

“I want to believe you.” He finally admits. 

She nodded slightly, reveling in the movement that she could now perform with only a headache like she was hungover from a four day bender. “Why don’t you?” She asked as she slowly chanced sitting up. Some things were still mending, but she didn’t think she’d been conscious without moving for this long in her entire life. Her head swam and everything still hurt, but there were no sharp stabbing pains that suggested she’d punctured an organ or anything. 

Bucky let out a disbelieving snort. “Seriously? Look at you. Those were fatal injuries.” 

“Yeah, well, you didn’t know about this when you raided my warehouse.” She pointed out, then staggered to her feet. She was unsteady, but she managed to stay up. Yay.

He looked like she’d slapped him. “You knew about that?”

“You’re an idiot if you didn’t think I’d wait around to see just who my thief was.” She grumbled, stumbling through the snow toward the mess of blood, branches and jagged rocks she’d landed on. Yeah, no wonder she was so hurt. This would have to be destroyed. 

Way back in the day when she’d been dying of palladium poison and Natasha had injected her with a mystery substance and called it a cure, she’d spent a few weeks trying to figure out exactly what they had given her and how it worked. Turns out it wasn’t some magical cure all panacea. No, instead it had forced a mutation in her cells so that they would assimilate foreign bodies and render them inert instead of fighting them. It meant that the poison no longer impacted her health. It didn’t mean that the poison was no longer in her bloodstream. It was the reason that her version of Extremis was so fucked up. It was the reason the suit was inside of her now. That first dose had been meant for Rhodey, even though he’d later refused to accept it. Vision had just finished synthesising it when Friday’s mayday call had gone out. 

When she’d used Extremis the first time to have the reactor removed, she, Bruce and Helen had spent weeks tweaking and programming it to take her toxic blood and mutation into account to make sure that the serum wouldn’t fuse with her system permanently. Rhodey’s version had had no such precautions included. So in Siberia, when the Extremis virus had hit her system, the mutation had immediately accepted it as if it had always been a part of her. Then Extremis had found her implants for the suit and had the capability of following the wireless signal to the prototype nanotech armour she had been working on and had seemingly convinced or tricked her mutation into determining that the nanotech belonged to her system just as much as everything else inside of her. The nanotech had already been coded to interface with her reboot of the Iron Legion, which had been accepted just as easily once Extremis had determined that the nanotech was easier to integrate with her body than an additional eight drone suits and had converted their designs into more nanobots. 

Thus a monster was born.

No way was she going to let Hydra or anyone else get ahold of a blood sample. 

She drew up the plans for the flamethrower she had used in the very first iteration of the Iron Queen suit, and the nanobots hidden inside her bones sluggishly seeped out of her pores and formed around her hand. Burning away her blood only took a few moments but she knew her power output was pathetic. She had a number of arc reactors situated within her body now, but the nanobots used up a lot of energy and a lot of them were damaged in the fall or still focussed on shoring up her injuries. It would take some time for them to self-repair, but now that Extremis had mostly healed the damage her body had taken, the nanobots would be able to focus more on repairs. 

When she turned back to the small campfire Bucky had built, he was watching her cautiously with his hand on his sidearm. She let the flamethrower seep back into her body, then held her hands up to show she wasn’t armed, for all the good that that would do. 

“Who do you work for?” Bucky demanded. 

“No one.” She answered simply. 

“Don’t fucking lie to me, doll.” He said, but it sounded more like he was pleading with her than threatening her. 

“Not lying. I’ve been reliably informed that I don’t play well with others.” She huffed, thinking of Natasha’s bullshit personality profile. 

“Then whose side are you on?” He demanded. 

“I’m American.” She said firmly. “But I’m not part of this war.” 

“Why not?” Bucky asked. 

“I can’t get involved. I have my reasons.” She grumbled, already missing the days when he let her have her secrets. 

“That’s not good enough.” He growled. 

“Well, tough.” She snapped, finally losing patience with this inquisition. “I don’t owe you shit, Bucky.” 

He reared back like he’d been slapped, and good. Because she was in no mood to deal with an interrogation from the man she had just saved at great risk and pain to herself. He hadn’t even thanked her. Maybe he wasn’t so different from Rogers after all. 

A dark look crossed over his face and he slowly drew his sidearm from its holster. “I need you to answer my questions.” 

“You just watched me recover from my spine being shattered. Do you really think that shooting me will stop me?” She questioned. 

He didn’t look at all deterred. “Why did you target me?”

Her brow quirked. “You were falling into a ravine, Bucky.” 

“Not that. The night we met. You approached me on purpose.” He clarified. “You’ve been under surveillance for almost a year. Your tail noticed a change in your behaviour right after we met. So why me? What did you get out of me?”

She forced her expression to go neutral before she could reveal her surprise. She’d been under surveillance? She hadn’t even noticed. Damn the fucking ‘40s and the lack of decent technology for her to hack. She should have built her own surveillance systems, but she’d been so focussed on fitting in and not drawing attention to herself that she’d been reluctant to do so. Well shit. How much did they know? Had they seen her hide her time machine components? 

She needed to get back, but her suit was fucked for at least another few days and even if it wasn’t, she wasn’t about to leave Bucky here to fend off Hydra on his own. 

She glanced up at the sky, noticing that it was already late in the afternoon and that Bucky had already built a temporary shelter and piled firewood while she’d been busy writhing in pain. He was clearly ready to spend the night here and they probably only had an hour or two of daylight left. There was no point in moving until morning. She’d be a bit steadier on her feet by then too.

“Nothing.” She eventually answered. “I got nothing from you.” 

He pursed his lips, scowling more fiercely. “Then why?” 

“It doesn’t matter.” She answered. 

“It damn well does.” He countered immediately. 

She pressed her lips together and took a deep breath, feeling her recently healed lungs ache at the expansion, then she let it out slowly. Patience had never been her strong suit. She was easily annoyed, especially when people were stubborn with her, but she was trying here. She was trying so hard not to jump down his throat and verbally annihilate him. 

“Fine.” She finally sighed. “You’re right. I targeted you. But you turned out to not be what I thought you were, so I went back to what I was supposed to be working on.” 

“And what did you think I was?” He wondered, finally lowering his gun. 

“That hardly matters now, does it?” She shrugged. 

His lips pursed and he glanced away from her before shaking his head. “I guess not. One more question. What is that project that you’re working on?” 

“I told you already.” She answered neutrally. “It’s a secret. One I’ll take to the grave. So you’d better be prepared to fully commit to forcefully extracting it from me if you’re going to keep on with this line of questioning.” 

He grimaced. “Jesus, Toni. Is that what you think I am? Someone who would torture you?” 

“You did just pull your gun on me, Bucky.” She pointed out. 

“Yeah, well you’re a suspected Hydra agent.” He countered. 

“And I would love to hear what kind of proof you have for that claim. It must be pretty rock solid, right?” She goaded, genuinely curious. 

“Your tech.” He answered. “Nobody’s seen anything like it, not even Howard Stark.” 

“Oh fuck, you showed it to Howard?” She demanded. 

God damn it. If anyone could determine its use, it would be her father. Sure, the component that had been stolen wasn’t a diagnostic piece, but with enough time with it, Howard would no doubt find a dozen different uses for the thing. 

“You know him?” Bucky asked, his gaze suddenly going sharp. 

“Sure.” She grumbled, staggering a few steps closer to the fire and sitting down. While Extremis helped her to always run warm, she really wasn’t dressed for an alpine adventure. She was in what approximated as workshop clothes for the forties, which was basically just men’s clothing that she’d picked up a few months ago and had scandalised her neighbours with ever since.

“How do you know him?” He asked and there was a tinge of  _ something _ in his voice that clued her in to what he was thinking, which abruptly almost made her gag. Damn Howard for his womanising younger years. Just the thought of what Bucky was thinking was gross.

“By reputation.” She answered. “I’m familiar with some of his work.” 

Then she panicked for a moment and tried to think of something Howard had built in this time period that she knew about. The only thing she could think of was his stupid hover car and like hell was she going to admit to having studied it, even though she’d taken the damn thing apart over a hundred times. 

“Huh, guess all you engineering types run in the same circles.” Bucky said slowly. “Except he’d never heard of you.” 

“Not my problem if he’s not keeping on top of things.” She countered petulantly. “But that’s hardly surprising anyway, since I haven’t published my work.” 

“Why not?” Bucky asked as he settled down across the fire from her. 

“Because I don’t want the attention.” She answered. “You know, for a man who told me he wasn’t going to ask any more questions, you’re doing a terrible job.” 

He ignored the jab with a roll of his eyes. “Even if you don’t want attention, you’d need a benefactor. The money for all those shipments had to come from somewhere.” 

She laughed and considered lying through her teeth about coming from a family of old money, but it would be too easy to get caught in that lie and he already knew about the suit anyway. “Maybe I just took the money I needed from some Nazi scumbags.” 

He got halfway through rolling his eyes before he paused and scrutinised her more closely. “Did you?” 

She sent him a vicious smile that showed all her teeth. “They had hardly come by it though proper and legal means. It’s Jewish blood money. I might not be able to help the victims, but I’d bet that they don’t want their wealth in the hands of their oppressors either.”

“How did you get it?” He wondered. 

“I took it.” She answered simply and pointedly didn’t elaborate further. “Now, if we’re all done playing twenty questions, we should make plans for our continued survival. I’m plenty resourceful, but I’ve never been one for camping. I see that you have shelter and warmth already taken care of. There’s plenty of snow around that we can melt for water. Do you happen to have food?” 

The downside of the suit being nested inside of her was that she could no longer store anything in it. Her previous suit had had emergency rations and a first aid kit in a hidden compartment in each thigh. Now, she had only what she was wearing. 

He silently watched her for another moment before reaching into the pocket of his jacket and pulling out a packet of dried meat. “This is all I’ve got.” He said grimly. “We left the rest of our supplies up on the ridge over there.” 

He gestured behind her. She turned to follow his gesture and grimaced. The ridge he was pointing to was at least a few miles away and several hundred feet up a sheer rock face. “Okay.” 

Well, she’d gone several days without food often enough in the lab that she wasn’t too worried. However, the lack of external energy sources would slow down the last of her healing and the repair of the nanobots in her bloodstream even further. Extremis had been designed to work with her body’s processes rather than usurp them, meaning that it relied rather heavily on her metabolism. 

She ran a simulation with her mind and realised that if they didn’t retrieve the supplies that they would probably both die, or at least suffer horribly. Besides, the cached supplies probably included more than just food. Maybe there would be an extra blanket or something. Extremis helped her to run hot, but she hadn’t had to face any adverse weather situations since she had been injected and the cold was starting to get to her. It was bringing back unpleasant memories of Siberia. 

She moved a little closer to the fire, but it didn’t do much to chase the chill from her veins. Bucky eventually sighed and started pulling off his jacket but she shook her head. “Don’t bother. You need it more than I do. Trust me, freezing to death isn’t a great way to go.” 

She’d heard that it was peaceful. She’d heard that freezing to death was just like going to sleep and never waking up. And she’d fought it. She’d fought it so hard, but she’d already been running on fumes even before she’d gotten to Siberia and then with the blood loss . . . well, it hadn’t been a battle she could win. Friday had told her after, once she’d regained consciousness with Extremis flowing fire through her veins, that she’d managed to last almost seventeen hours before she’d succumbed and the life signs detector had gone red. To this day, she still didn’t know if it had been the cold or the blood loss that had gotten to her first. No one could tell her. Because no one else had been there. 

Freezing to death was long and lonely and even if it wasn’t physically painful, it left her with too long to think about her impending demise. She’d done a lot of thinking in that fucking bunker. She’d thought about a lot of regrets she’d accumulated throughout her life. But in the end, the two regrets that were the most important were that she had ever put her trust in a man that had heaped abuse on her from the moment they’d met, and that Rhodey would never walk again because of her. 

Both of those regrets had happened within only a few hours of her impending death, so she’d figured that it was okay to let go. Beyond those recent events, she’d had no regrets. She’d come to terms with the sins she had unwittingly enabled during her younger years and had made amends for them. She’d been looking forward to finally being at peace. 

Alas, there’s no rest for the wicked.

Bucky sighed and moved to sit next to her, sharing body heat since she wouldn’t let him give her his coat. “What happened to you? What made you able to do the things you can do?” He asked, gesturing vaguely toward the hand that had been encased with a flamethrower only a handful of minutes before. 

“I died.” She answered morbidly. “And then I woke up, and they had done this to me because they didn’t want to let me go.” 

Bucky paled, his expression edging toward pure horror. “They?”

She frowned. The first injection of the virus had to have been injected as soon as they’d found her. It wasn’t meant to revive the dead, so it must have only been minutes after she’d faded away that they had begun resuscitating her and injecting her with an experimental virus that was too dangerous for public consumption. 

It was Vision and the UN Joint Task Force officers that had first retrieved her and administered that first injection. After that, due to the inherent complications of her physiology, Dr. Cho had been brought in to consult, but by then the choice had already been made for her. 

“My . . .” What did she call him? ‘Family’ had lost its sheen since most of hers had turned on her. But Vision was made from Jarvis. And while they weren’t the same, she’d always considered him something of a son or grandson. But ‘friend’ didn’t do it justice. She hadn’t been great for him, she knew, but she had still helped bring him into the world. “It doesn’t matter.” She finally settled on. “What’s done is done.” 

Bucky pursed his lips, but he didn’t say anything more about it. And Toni was done with talking anyway. She was tired, cold and sore and she had only more hardships to look forward to in the morning. They watched the flames silently as the sky began to darken. She didn’t remember nodding off.


	8. False Steps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're not sure where they stand with each other anymore.

Bucky was conflicted and disturbed. So it turned out that Toni was nothing like what he’d thought she was. No, it turned out she was  _ more _ . More everything. More gorgeous and smart and brave than he had ever considered. But she was more without him knowing where her loyalties might lay. 

She’d saved him. She’d risked her life to save him, put herself between him and the cold, hard earth as they fell and had taken the brunt of their impact. And she hadn’t complained about it even once. That had to count for something, didn’t it?

Still, he couldn’t quite shut down the part of his brain that wondered what she had saved him _ for _ , or how she had known that he needed saving in the first place. And those doubts had been eating at him from the moment he had seen that it was Toni that had caught him. 

He watched her trudge through the thigh deep snow ahead of him with a frown on his lips. He’d offered to go first, but she’d scowled at him before rolling her eyes and moving ahead. She was soaked through to the bone. Her clothes really weren’t weather appropriate, but whatever had been done to her apparently helped her not to feel it. Still, it couldn’t be comfortable and he was pretty sure he’d seen her shivering a moment ago, before everything in her countenance had gone still again, like she could just turn it off. He didn’t know what that meant. 

They’d left their temporary camp shortly after sun up. He’d tried to share part of his ration with her, but she’d refused. So apparently she could still function just fine while cold and hungry, which he was pretty sure the brass would want to know as soon as they got back to civilization. They’d been hiking for hours now with very few breaks and he was beginning to get concerned that she was going to collapse on him, but it didn’t happen. Her spirit was indomitable and they reached the bottom of the ridge they’d been aiming for all day by mid-afternoon. She slumped down against the rock face to rest while Bucky grimaced and tried to pick out hand and foot holds. This climb was going to be god awful, but at least it had a slight angle inwards toward the top, so he wouldn’t be completely hanging off of it. 

He let out a deep breath and shook out his hands before stepping up. Toni looked at him like he’d grown a second head. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Climbing? We need to get up to the cache somehow.” He stated obviously. 

She shook her head. “You make camp. I’ll go.” 

“Toni, I’m not an invalid.” He protested, starting to get annoyed with her trying to take care of everything herself. 

“Never said you were. But you can’t fly, can you?” She asked as something red seeped out around her hands and feet. It solidified into red and black hard metal plating, like medieval gauntlets and boots. “So why don’t you get camp ready, yeah? I’ll be back in a flash. That’s a much better plan than you killing yourself on a slippery, cold rockwall, right?” 

He stepped away from her as her hands and feet began gathering power, making a soft whining sound. She hovered for a moment in front of him before beginning a slow ascent. It took her mere minutes to reach the top, whereas he’d been anticipating a climb of more than an hour. Whatever it was that had been done to her, it was remarkable. Still, the price she’d paid to attain it was horrifying and explained some of the scars he’d seen littering her body. 

He watched her disappear over the top of the ridge and sighed before gathering what firewood he could find in the river valley they’d stuck to all day. The wood was wet and would probably barely burn, but at this point anything was better than nothing. He set about using the pieces he couldn’t break down into firewood to make a temporary shelter again. The sky had been cloudy and overcast all day and he was worried about being caught out here in a snowstorm.

Part of him was surprised when he heard the whine of Toni’s flying mechanisms. Part of him had somehow still expected her to take the supplies and leave him to his fate, no matter how illogical that would have been after saving his life. But there she was, hovering slowly as she began her descent with two bulging packs slung over her shoulders. It looked like the bags had been rifled through and condensed, which was clearly easier than bringing all ten bags down. 

She got most of the way down before one of her boots seemed to sputter and go out, much like the hover car from the Stark Expo. “Oh, shit.” She yelped, flailing helplessly before promptly falling the last twenty-five feet. She hit the side of the rock face and slid the rest of the way down over jagged rock deposits and shrubs. She came to a stop a few feet away from him and rolled over with a groan. “Ow.”  

“Are you alright?” He asked as he rushed to crouch next to her and check her for injuries. For anyone else, that would have been a dangerous fall. But Toni had fallen from a much greater height just yesterday and had recovered within a few hours. 

She stared up at him for a moment and the look on her face suggested that she was reconsidering all of her life’s choices to date, but it passed a moment later and she sat up with a grimace. “I’m always fine.” She grumbled as she shook out her arm; it was bleeding freely from a gash that ran from her elbow to wrist.  Her face was bruised and bloodied as well. “Damn, that smarts. Jesus Christ on a cracker.” 

He frowned and reached out for her slowly. Since this whole falling into a ravine fiasco, she hadn’t let him get too close to her. Last night they had shared body warmth, but when he’d tried to take her hand, she’d shaken him off. He understood why; he had broken her trust. He had unilaterally trusted the suspicions Phillips and Stark had about her without even letting her try to defend or explain herself. And yet, she’d still saved him. 

She let him brush his thumb over her cheek, wiping blood away from the small cut there that was already starting to stitch itself back together before his eyes. She rolled her eyes at his concern. “Don’t worry about it.” She said nonchalantly then brushed his hand away and pushed herself to her feet. 

She was steady and didn’t seem to be limping, so he let her go unimpeded. Then she promptly began to strip out of her soaking wet and bloody clothes. “What the hell are you doing? He snapped in surprise. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen her naked before, but this was hardly the time or place and she could have at least asked him to turn around.

“Stop being such a prude.” She grumbled as she wrapped the bloody shirt around her still bleeding arm. “Especially when I already know how you like it in the bedroom.” 

She turned away from him and began rummaging through one of the packs she’d brought down from the ridge. She pulled out Morita’s extra shirt and a pair of pants that hung off of her thin frame, then fashioned a belt out of the drawstring on one of the packs. Once she was suitably dressed, she pulled out two wool blankets and wrapped herself in them, then tossed another one toward him. 

He huffed a laugh and wrapped it around his shoulders before he went about starting the fire. She settled on the boulder across from him, bundled up so much that she reminded him of Steve in the winter, back when he was small. Back when they’d lived together in a dive of a one room apartment and the boiler barely worked and Steve would die if he caught a chill.

Back when things were simple and their biggest enemies were Arthur O'Donnell down the street and Steve’s shitty lungs and heart. Sometimes he missed it so bad that it physically hurt. He was happy that Steve was healthy now, but damn if he couldn’t do without all of the complications it had come with. He missed his simple life back in New York, before he’d known what it was like to kill someone. 

“You look sad.” She murmured after a moment, but when he looked up at her she was resolutely staring into the flickering flames between them. 

“Just thinking about home.” He answered. 

“Yeah. I miss it too. You know, after . . . after this happened to me,” She said, with a vague gesture to herself, “all I could think about was all the things that I had lost. All I could think about was the way I was betrayed, or how my friends were hurt because of me . . . how my whole life was just falling apart and there was nothing left to salvage. But . . . I still miss it. I miss Pepper giving me the evil eye whenever I get too excited about something. I miss Rhodey’s laugh, though I’m not sure how much he’s laughing now after. . . I miss Vision’s attempts at cooking and the snotty way he doesn’t let me help because he wants to figure it out on his own. I miss my kids.” 

The last words were said at almost a whisper, but Bucky still heard them. “You have kids?” 

She blinked, almost startled, like she hadn’t meant to let that slip. Then, after another moment of hesitation, she chuckled slightly. “Not of my flesh. I … um … can’t. But if I ever could have had a kid of my own, I would have prayed that they took after Harley and Peter in some way. And my baby girl, Friday,  she’s so young but she’s growing up so fast, just whip smart and sassy as hell.”

“Sounds just like her mom.” He replied, watching as Toni’s face cycled through a couple expressions too fast and indistinct for him to decipher. He couldn’t tell if she was offended or pleased by his comment. 

“I hope not.” She eventually settled on. “I hope none of them are like me. They’ve all got so much potential. They’re going to be so much better than I can ever hope to be.” 

“They sound amazing.” He said softly, and he meant it. Whoever these kids were that she had taken under her wing, they had to be something special for her to talk about them this way. He’d gotten the impression that she was overall unimpressed with people in general. 

“Yeah,” She sighed, “they will be.”

They trailed off into silence after that as the sun began dropping behind the ridge above them and dropping the temperature even further. He was just about to ask what kind of rations she’d gotten from the cache on the ridge, when he heard something in the distance that set him on edge. Judging by the way that Toni stiffened, she could hear it too.

It sounded like a motor, like some kind of vehicle. But there were no roads in the valley and it didn’t sound heavy like a train. They glanced at each other uncertainly, then Toni was pushing herself out of her blanket bundle. 

“Hide.” She hissed at him. “I’ll play damsel in distress, you hide and shoot them if needed.” 

And yeah, he did not like that plan. “No way am I leaving you alone with some stranger. You hide. I’ll go talk to them and determine their intentions.”

Toni turned to look at him from where she was hiding their packs. “Right. So snipers are close quarters fighters now, are they?”

“Nothing’s saying it will come to a fight.” He countered. For all they knew, it could be a rescue party that had been sent after him. It might even be Steve. Though probably not. Would Steve even be back from apprehending Zola yet? Did they actually catch the bastard?

“Please, will you just do as I say. We don’t have time to argue. Next time, I promise I’ll let you play damsel in distress and I’ll play white knight.” She snapped. 

He grimaced but let her have her way. She was right in that if it were an enemy it would be best to be underestimated. It was just that, once again, she was throwing herself into danger headfirst and treating him like he was  _ delicate _ . He hated that, but he was a good soldier so he picked up his rifle and scrambled up a pile of boulders that were resting on the far side of their camp. They were out of the firelight and provided enough cover for him that he wouldn’t be seen. 

Meanwhile, Tony shucked off her shirt and put back on her bloody and wet one. It had been drying by the fire for the last few hours, but the fire was still mostly smoke due to the wet wood so they were undoubtedly still damp. The addition of that garment and way she pulled her hair out of its braid and scruffed it up left her looking far more desperate and harmless than she had been mere minutes before. 

It was just in time too. He could see the vehicles moving in the distance now. There were four of them and they each had a headlight that was illuminating their path through the valley. Bucky sighted down his rifle at them and found them to be some type of high tech snowmobile. 

Once again, he felt a frisson of doubt seep through him. Maybe these were Toni’s allies. Maybe they were Hydra. Maybe Toni was Hydra and she’d just been stringing him along until she could turn him over to her superiors. Though if that were the case, it would have made more sense to send him out first and have her hang back. 

Tony lingered by the fire, putting on an act of nearly freezing to death as the snowmobiles got closer. When they were within fifty feet of the fire, and obviously aiming straight for the camp, Toni stepped away and waved them down. 

“Oh thank god you came!” She exclaimed. “I thought I was going to die.” 

She approached the nearest machine without fear, reaching for the riders hands as if in supplication. The man said something to her that Bucky didn’t understand, but it sounded like Russian and Bucky let himself relax a little. The Russians were their allies in this war. They were holding the eastern front down while the rest of the allies were focussing on the west. How a group of Russians had managed to cross enemy territory to get to Switzerland, he wasn’t quite sure, but he figured that it must be possible to go around the long way. 

They spoke for a few more minutes, both in Russian, Toni gesturing wildly and accepting a blanket out of the man’s pack. She wrapped it around herself and continued talking with far too much enthusiasm until one of the other men dismounted and stepped toward her. He gestured toward the bloody sleeve of her tunic, so he was maybe some kind of doctor. 

He could see her shaking her head, keeping her arm out of the man’s reach and he knew the gig was up.There was no reason to hide a wound from a doctor unless something didn’t add up. The way that they turned on her was almost instantaneous. One moment the three other men were all still seated astride their vehicles, and the next they were drawing weapons and opening fire. From what he could tell, there had been no call to surrender. 

He lined up his first shot on the doctor, who had pulled some kind of syringe out of his pocket and was trying to stab Toni with it. No fucking way was he letting someone force another substance into her body. 

By the time the doctor hit the ground, Toni’s gauntlets had formed around her fingers, and she was hurling some kind of energy blast at her assailants. One of the Russians managed to get into cover behind his vehicle and Bucky focused on keeping him there and keeping him from taking pot shots at Toni while she was wiping the floor with the other two Russians. When the guy that had been in cover decided he should cut his losses and flee, he climbed up onto his snowmobile and gunned it to try to get away, leaving himself completely exposed. 

Bucky took the shot and the man slumped off the side of the vehicle within twenty feet of where they’d parked. And then there was silence except for the idling of the snowmobile’s engine. Toni waved toward him before hurrying over to turn the machine off. And then it was just a simple, quite, alpine night again. 

“Well that was fun.” Toni said sarcastically before she began rifling through the Russians’ supplies. She pulled a flask out of one of them and grinned brightly as she shook it. “Jackpot.” 

It was the way that she was utterly unconcerned about the four bodies littering the ground around her that tipped him off that she was no stranger to death and violence. Not that too many people weren’t in this war, but most of them didn’t kill two men and immediately decide to steal their liquor. 

He climbed down from his perch and approached her warily, but she simply took a long pull from the flask and offered it to him. He took it, feeling the burn of vodka racing down his throat and chasing away some of the winter chill from his bones. 

“They were Russians.” He eventually said, grimly realising that they had just murdered four allied soldiers. 

“Sure.” Tony nodded as she went back to searching through their packs, then patting down the men to see what was in their pockets. 

“Fuck, we just killed allies.” He groaned, taking another long gulp of vodka. 

“They were Hydra.” Toni said simply. 

He laughed sadly. “Hydra is German, not Russian.”

“Hydra has a mission to expand over the whole globe. You really think they’re going to stay in Hitler’s shadow?” Toni countered. 

“How do you know that?” He demanded. 

“I just do.” She said, and the sharp tone of her voice indicated loud an clear that she wasn’t going to expand on this subject. “Ah ha! Here, read it yourself.” She said after another moment, shoving a letter the doctor had been carrying at him. 

He took it and moved closer to the fire so that he could see it better. It wasn’t a letter. It was a telegram detailing orders. 

_ Karpov. Recover Zola’s experiment from Rhine valley. Likely dead/injured. Reward upon completion. Heil Hydra. S. _

Bucky paled as he reread the short message. These men had been coming for him. If Toni hadn’t been there to save him, he would have been strapped to Zola’s fucking table again. He tossed the paper into the fire with shaking fingers. 

“That was evidence.” Toni sighed, but she didn’t sound exactly upset about it. 

He stared at her across the fire as she changed back into dry clothes. “Thought you didn’t work for anyone.” 

“I don’t.”

“Then what do you need evidence for?” He asked. 

“I don’t. Thought you might have wanted it for when you get back. But whatever.” She shrugged nonchalantly as she bundled herself back up into her blankets and drifted closer to the fire. 

He watched her for a moment, taking in the relaxed set of her shoulders and the unconcerned expression on her face. She didn’t look suspicious of him at all. She had read the telegram. She’d clearly read the implication that he was an escaped experiment - something he hadn’t even dared to tell Steve - and she hadn’t even blinked an eye. “You knew.” 

She frowned. “Knew what?” 

“About what happened to me. About what Hydra did to me.” He spat. 

Her expression went neutral, which was pretty much a confirmation all on its own, but she still did him the courtesy of answering. “Yes. I heard about it. Nothing specific, just that they were trying to copy Erskine’s serum.” 

“Is that what it was?” He asked, because it wasn’t like they had told him. All he remembered was pain and fear and fire in his veins. 

Her brows creased. “You didn’t know?” 

He chuckled grimly. “No. They don’t tell prisoners things like that. And they especially don’t tell failed experiments things like that.” 

“You weren’t a failed experiment. There would be no need to recover you if you were.” She answered matter-of-factly. 

“Well I’m certainly no super soldier. And my face hasn’t melted off either.” He protested. 

Toni shrugged easily, as if it didn’t matter one way or the other. “Whatever you say, Bucky.” 

It bothered him more than he liked to admit. It bothered him that his suffering didn’t seem to matter to her. As if being strapped to a table and experimented on by a madman were an everyday occurrence. And who knows, maybe it was. How else could she know about Zola’s experiment and what he was trying to achieve?

“You were Hydra, weren’t you? Even if you’re not now.” Because it was unlikely that a Hydra agent would take down her own allies. “You defected, didn’t you?” 

A flash of fury crossed her face before she pushed it down and went neutral again. “No.” She said sharply, before promptly getting up and moving back toward the corpses behind them. She started dragging them away from camp and Bucky let her go, realising that he’d put his foot in his mouth again. 

Maybe keeping accusing the woman who kept saving him from death or capture of being Hydra wasn’t the smartest idea, but so many things about her just didn’t add up. He wanted to trust her. He wanted to love her, because he had never met a woman like her, never fallen for a woman so quickly, but she was making it so difficult. 

****

Toni was just done. She had tried, but every time she tried to give him something real, he threw it back in her face within minutes or hours. She wasn’t fucking Hydra. What about her made these assholes keep thinking she was Hydra? Even Steve fucking Rogers had doubted her. When she’d demanded to know why he hadn’t contacted her during that whole Project Insight fiasco, he had told her that he hadn’t known who to trust. As if she might have been a fucking sleeper agent all along. 

Of course, that hadn’t stopped his freeloading ass from landing on her doorstep as soon as he realised that burning the organisation that signed his checks to the ground meant there were no more paychecks. Fucking assholes, him and Natasha both.

Though, thankfully, Hydra had actually helped them out this time. She’d known that they would send someone to come get Bucky and turn him into a murderbot, but she hadn’t anticipated the snowmobiles. Honestly, she hadn’t even known they’d been invented already. But it was great, because instead of looking at another week or more of trudging through the snow to get back to civilization, they were looking at one or two days. 

As an added bonus, they didn’t have to talk to each other at all the next day because she’d insisted that they each take their own machine. That way there would be a backup option if one of them broke down. They’d divided their supplies equally between machines and taken off shortly after sun up. She didn’t know exactly where they were, because satellites and GPS hadn’t been invented yet, but she knew the general direction they needed to travel and she knew if they just continued to follow the river, it would lead them back to the town where she’d left her time machine components.

The sooner the better. Now that she knew Howard was aware of her tech, she needed to get back as soon as possible to keep it out of his hands. She hadn’t hidden it very well and if he found it, it would only take him a few hours to determine its use, even if it didn’t have a power source. And Howard Stark with a time machine was just a nightmare waiting to happen. 

The sun was already setting before Bucky flagged her down to pull over and stop. She grimaced but slowed her machine and pulled it up next to him. The last thing she wanted to do was to spend another night being accused of being a Nazi sympathiser. 

“It’s getting pretty dark, Toni. We should set up camp.” Bucky called to her over the sound of the engines. 

She shrugged. “We’ve got to be close. Only a few more hours.” She called back, praying she was right. “We can press on.” 

He shook his head and cut the engine on his machine. “No. I’m gonna make camp. It’s better to be safe.” 

She bit down on her lip hard and debated the merit of just leaving him behind. The danger was probably over now. Hydra’s people had already been disposed of. There was no need for her to babysit him anymore. She could leave him here and go on ahead. 

Before she could come to a decision one way or the other, Bucky dismounted and came to stand next to her. It must have been obvious what she’d been thinking, because he reached over the handlebar and turned the ignition of her machine off. Their surroundings were cast into silence so abruptly it left her ears ringing. She definitely missed the quiet running engines of the 21st century. 

“I’m sorry.” Bucky said, actually looking apologetic. “I shouldn’t judge you so quickly or accuse you of being the enemy. You’re a mystery, Toni, but you’ve never done anything that should make me wary of you. You’ve never acted against me. You’ve always been kind and selfless when it came to me, and I should have taken that into account.”

She pressed her lips together. She wasn’t the sort of person that people ever apologised to. No one in her life could bring themselves to show enough weakness to acknowledge their own wrongdoing. Receiving an apology that she thought he might actually mean made her almost more uncomfortable that seeing that ring that she had decidedly refused to mention had. 

“You’re not entitled to my secrets.” She said grimly. 

“I know. I know you’ve got no reason to tell me. And I know you want nothing more than to be rid of me, but it’s getting late, Toni. It’s cold out and we haven’t stopped all day. We need to rest.” He said, grimly. “Please.” 

“Fine.” She relented. “But if you start throwing accusations my way again, I’m gonna leave you here to find your own way back. Capisce?”

“Yeah, I got it.” He said with a small smile before holding out his hand to her, like some kind of medieval knight escorting her out of a carriage. She stared at his hand dubiously for a moment, before deciding it was more effort than it was worth to shoot him down.

So they set about making camp and settled down for an uneventful night. He tried to strike up conversation with her a few times, but she wasn’t sure what to do with him now. She had been impressed, maybe even smitten with him, for all that she’d known it was hopeless from the start. But whatever trust there had been between them had already been damaged and she didn’t see the point in repairing it when she was going to be leaving in a matter of days. 

So she was cordial and polite, but she didn’t give him any more of herself than she already had. Trust had never come easy to her, but she had been betrayed enough by now that she was wary of opening herself up to it so easily. And he had already proven that he would side with Rogers against her. Just as he had in her time, just as it had been with the rest of the Avengers; no one would choose Toni Stark over Steve Rogers.

And those few who did suffered for their mistake.


	9. Finale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All good things come to an end.

As Toni had suspected, the town was only a few hours away from where they had stopped for the night. They pulled up onto a rise overlooking the town shortly before noon the next day. Bucky couldn’t help the part of him that wished that it had been further away. Everything was still messed up between them. He had apologised, but he hadn’t been given the chance to earn her forgiveness and it didn’t look like she was going to let him. 

It left him feeling hollow in his chest. The one good thing to come out of his deployment and he had fucked it up so badly that he didn’t even know how to begin to fix it. He was under no illusions that she wasn’t rushing back to town to finish her project. And then she was going to be gone from his life. Just like she’d promised from the beginning. Just like he’d been too stubborn to accept since the first time she’d told him that they had no future. 

She dismounted from her snowmobile and sorted through her bag before tying the bag to his machine. It was clear that she was planning on separating from him here and he wasn’t sure how to take it. Of course he knew that she wasn’t going to return to base with him. Phillips would have her locked up within a minute. But he’d thought . . . oh hell, he needed more time. 

“Toni.” He said, his voice more reverent than he had actually intended as he dismounted from his machine and stepped up to her. 

She glanced at him warily, but stood her ground. At least she was going to let him speak. He just prayed that he could get through this without putting his foot in his mouth again. He swallowed thickly, forcing back the impending sense of loss that he was already feeling when she was still right in front of him. 

“I know I messed up with you. I know I didn’t respect you the way that I shoulda. And I didn’t trust you. You saved my life and I didn’t even thank you. Thank you. I wouldn’t be here without you.” He said quietly. “And I know you probably don’t want to ever see me again, let alone think of me, but I’m going to be thinking about you for the rest of my life. Because you are one of a kind, doll, and I have never loved anyone as brightly and strongly as I love you.” 

She sniffled, but he couldn’t quite tell if she was tearing up or it is was an effect of slogging through snow banks for days. “Bucky -” She started, but he cut her off. 

“Just . . . just let me finish.” He said quickly, worried about being derailed before he could make his request. He pulled his tags off over his head and held them out to her. “I know you probably don’t want to see me again, but just . . . will you think of me sometimes? Will you remember me?” 

It would have to be enough. Maybe someday he would find someone who could compare to her, though he fucking doubted it. Then again, there was no guarantee that he would come out of the other end of this war alive, so there was that. 

She was silent for a moment and her expression looked sad before she reached out and took his tags, slipping them over her head to hang around her neck. They settled over her heart and he couldn’t think of a better place for them to be. Then she stepped up to him, standing on her tiptoes as she planted a soft, slow kiss on him that seeped warmth into his veins like a shot of brandy. 

“Live well, Bucky.” She said, with a sad smile. “Don’t waste your life.” 

He nodded and returned her smile, “You too.” 

“I’m trying.” She said as she stepped back from him. Her armour seeped out of her skin to cover her from head to toe. It was the first time he had seen it in its impressive entirety since she had caught him with it in the ravine. It was incredible, like something out of a sci-fi novel. 

The masked helmet gave him one last nod, before the whole armour shimmered and disappeared from sight. He heard the muted whine of the flying mechanisms, felt a soft gust of warm air, and then knew he was alone. He closed his eyes and felt a tidal wave of regret and heartbreak wash over him before he forced himself back onto his snowmobile to make his way to the base. 

When he got there, Steve was trying to drown himself in liquor that no longer worked on him. They stared at each other for a long moment, Steve looking halfway between looking like he’d seen a ghost and looking like he was about to drop to his knees and pray. 

“Bucky?” Steve breathed incredulously. 

“Hey, punk.” He said, nonchalantly stuffing his hands in his pockets and leaning against the doorframe, as if returning from certain death was no big deal. He was still pissed about Steve stealing from Toni, but, in the end, Steve would always be his brother.

“H-h-how?” Steve asked, his voice going a little hysterical at the end. 

He shrugged. “Got lucky.” 

There was a moment of pregnant silence before Steve was storming across the bar and dragging him into a hug that was way on the far side of too tight. He clapped Steve on his back, trying to tap out, but if anything Steve’s hug just got tighter. 

“I thought you were dead. I should have sent a team to look for you. I should have gone looking for you.” Steve lamented. 

“Hey, Stevie, it’s fine. It all worked out. Now let me go. I begged out of debriefing with the colonel to come find you.” He protested. 

Steve did eventually let him go and followed him to the command tent to listen to his debrief, where Bucky promptly lied through his teeth. He wasn’t going to betray Toni’s trust again, not after everything she had done for him. Not after she had suffered in screaming agony for half a day because she had decided to save his life. 

No, the story he told had him luckily sinking into a snowbank and causing a minor avalanche that brought him down to the bottom of the valley in one piece once he’d managed to luckily dig himself out. The fight with the Hydra goons still happened, but he managed to take them all out with his sniper skills using the cover of darkness, hence the high tech snow machine he’d rolled in on.

Of course, he lost his tags somewhere in the avalanche and would need to have some new ones made. 

***

Toni used her retroreflectors until she was inside of her warehouse and had stealthily checked it for intruders using every sensor in her arsenal. When they all came back negative, she let herself back up onto the roof to check for her time machine. Thankfully, it was still there, just as she’d left it except for the dusting of snow sitting over the lid of the crate. 

Jack-fucking-pot. 

She snatched it up and disappeared back into the warehouse, where her tools still thankfully were laying around and she promptly let the suit slide away and got to work. She needed to get the fuck back to her own time before she fucked up the timeline any further.  Part of her mind was still berating herself for being so stupid, but the majority of her focus was upon the task at hand. 

She managed to finished fabricating the last of the pieces she needed by midnight, and immediately set to work on bringing all the components together and running diagnostics on the interface. It was past the dinner hour of the next day by the time that she had finally done all that she could do without the last piece that had been stolen. 

She leaned back from her creation and stretched, feeling her spine crackle and pop the whole way down as she stared at the last item in the crate. Bucky’s ring gleamed innocently at her in the low light. What was she supposed to do with it? Leave it here? Give it back to him? Take it with her? Bucky probably still wanted her to have it, if that heartfelt speech was anything to go by. She licked her lips and sighed before picking it up and sliding it onto the chain to rest next to his tags. If nothing else, they would serve as proof that  _ someone _ was capable of loving Toni Stark with no fame or fortune taken into account. 

She fought back a yawn and stretched again. She was getting tired, but she didn’t have the luxury of time to rest. She needed to get the fuck out of the past before Bucky told someone that she was back in town. But before she could do that, she needed to retrieve the component that Rogers had stolen. While it wasn’t diagnostic to the function of the time machine, it was vital, as it was the component that would channel the power of her arc reactors into the time machine in order to provide enough energy to rip a hole in the fabric of reality and take her home. 

She settled for stuffing her face with whatever food she could find squirrelled away in the warehouse, before she once again let the Iron Queen armour envelope her and let her retroreflectors protect her from sight. The flight to the army base wasn’t long and she circled it twice while her sensors scanned the place, searching for what might be Howard’s workshop. 

It was surprisingly easy to find, though sneaking past the guards was a bit less easy. It took patience, which was not her forte, but she eventually managed to sneak through their patrols like she was running around a fucking video game. Rhodey would never believe her that all those times playing stealth builds in every video game ever would come in handy. 

She had anticipated having to subdue Howard and his assistants, but was pleasantly surprised when the lab was empty and the lights were off. Her suit had night vision capabilities, so searching through the lab in the dark was no issue and she found what she’d come for easily enough, slipping it into a temporary compartment in her armour to protect it on the flight back. 

She snuck back out of the tent, pulling some  _ Metal Gear Solid _ bullshit as she lingered invisibly within half a foot of one soldier who had stopped literally right in front of her to re-tie his boot. Once he had moved on, she gratefully took to the air and returned to her warehouse, slipping in through the door unseen. 

She should have known that was too easy. When had she ever been lucky enough for something to go to plan?

Howard Stark was in her warehouse, nose mere inches away from her time machine as he examined it. She clenched her fingers into fists as the memory of every science project she had ever created suddenly popped into her mind. They had never been good enough for Howard Stark, and she was just waiting for the fucker to make some kind of disparaging comment again.

A moment later, she realised he wasn’t talking because she was still invisible. She warred silently with herself as to what she should do. Maybe he would get bored and leave. Though that was unlikely. More likely was that he would get bored and disassemble her time machine. Which would just be . . . not good. 

With a sigh, she let the retroreflectors and the suit slide away, nimbly catching her liberated component before it could hit the floor. “I didn’t realise I’d invited company over.” She said sharply, causing Howard to jump in surprise and face her. 

“Who are you?” He asked with a furrowed brow. 

She arched her eyebrow, unimpressed. Leave it to Howard to break into a place and not even know who it belonged to. 

“Who are you really, Antonia Carbonell?” He asked again, before gesturing at the time machine. “I know what this is.” 

Of course he fucking did. Fuck. Fuck. Shit. Fuck. She grit her teeth, then stepped forward and snatched up a pair of needle nose pliers and her soldering gun. She didn’t have time to deal with twenty questions from her father. 

“Hmm.” Howard said speculatively. “You know me. I didn’t have to introduce myself and you aren’t attacking me. And this . . . well this is familiar.” He said, gesturing to where a bundle of different coloured wires were twisted and soldered to the circuit board. 

She stared at it uncomprehendingly for a moment before she realised what he’d noticed. She’d built her first circuit board at four years old; she’d learned how to do it from watching her father whenever he wasn’t too drunk and allowed her presence in his workshop. And Howard, being the arrogant, narcissistic son of a bitch that he was, always soldered the wires down into place with the hint of an ‘S’ shape as a type of signature. And she’d been doing the same her whole life without even thinking about it.

“So . . . you work for me in the future?” He hazarded a guess. “Never thought a woman would be interested in engineering, but I guess women are getting into all kinds of male jobs these days.” 

“You’re a piece of shit, Howard.” She said as she flicked on the soldering iron and connected the last component into place. It was a quick three connections to get it into place. She wasn’t sure if she did it to spite him or not, but she kept on including the Stark ‘S’ into her welds. 

“Your going to talk to your boss that way? You know I’m going to remember you.” Howard goaded. “Maybe I won’t take a chance on giving a dame a man’s job.” 

She chuckled as she set the soldering iron aside, replacing it with a screwdriver to screw the component onto the time machine and keep it from moving. “You know, I never did figure out why me having a vagina somehow made me less good at engineering in your eyes, especially because I’m better at it than you. But you’re wrong. I  _ never _ worked for you.” She said, before standing up straight and looking him in the eyes. “You were the world’s shittiest father though.”

She had the pleasure of watching the realisation sink in, and grinned showing all of her teeth. “Now, I’m about to go back where I belong. And when I do, I’m going to blow this place to hell. So, you may want to leave,  _ Dad _ .” She spat the last word out like the vilest of insults.

“That’s not -” He cut himself off and stared at her speculatively for a moment before taking a step away from her, backing up until he was at the door. He looked like he was considering saying something, but changed his mind and continued to turn away. 

“Oh, and Howard, maybe don’t invite snakes into your garden this time. I’m tired of inheriting your fucking problems.” She called after him, not certain if she was talking about Hydra in SHIELD or Stane in SI, or maybe even Vanko and the arc reactor plans. 

She stared after him for a moment, her brows furrowed in confusion at his easy compliance, but then again maybe the thought of having a kid had really freaked him out. She glanced down at her hands, wondering if she would fade out of existence all  _ Back to the Future  _ style if he decided not to marry her mother, but so far so good and she was still solid. 

Maybe she’d use the time machine and just wouldn’t exist after that if he decided not to have kids or marry someone else. What a clusterfuck. All for the satisfaction of telling Howard to fucking suck it. Jesus Christ, she was an idiot. 

Oh well, she wouldn’t know if she didn’t try, and there was no way she was going to linger around in the forties any longer. So she drew up the schematic for a badass bomb in her mind, calculating the size of the warehouse and the distance between it and other nearby buildings when determining its destructive force, then created it out of her nanobots, placing it right next to the time machine. She would have to replenish her nanobots when she got back to the 21st century, but that was a problem for Future Toni. 

For right now, she just needed to focus on being able to become Future Toni. She flexed her fingers first, then placed her hands into the charging cradle of the time machine. Then she focussed on drawing power from the arc reactor network nestled in her joints and directed the power down her arms, into her fingertips and into the time machine. 

For a second, nothing happened. Then suddenly everything whirred to life and there was a blinding flash of light that seared her retinas so badly she felt Extremis working on trying to repair the damage. She felt the ground shift below her, a vibration rattling through her and a searing heat and realised that the bomb had gone off a few seconds too early. 

And then she was gone, either dead or heading to the future. She didn’t know.

***

The explosion shook the entire damn town. Being so close to the front, they were almost certain that the Germans had broken through and were retaking the town. Bucky and the rest of the Commandos were among the first to rush to the scene, weapons ready to take down any Nazis that dared to cross their paths. 

That wasn’t what they found. 

He didn’t miss the concerned looks from his comrades when it became apparent that it was Toni’s workshop that had exploded. Or when they ran into a singed Howard Stark, who claimed to have blown Toni Carbonell up. 

He froze, staring into the inferno that was raging in the warehouse, trying to make out any figures that might be her. Surely a little fire wouldn’t be enough to take her out. Not after what he’d seen her bounce back from. Right? She couldn’t be. 

He glanced at Stark, at the perturbed expression on the man’s face as he watched the building burn and felt an inkling of suspicion curdle in his gut. Something wasn’t right here. Why had Stark even been here? Why would he have blown the building up instead of calling for reinforcements? They were supposed to secure Toni’s tech and Howard had been practically salivating over it. It made no sense for him to have destroyed it all. 

The engineer met his gaze after a few minutes in a way that he could only describe as being judged and found wanting. But he and Howard had gotten along fine prior to this, so what did that mean?

Had Stark captured Tony? Was he helping her? He couldn’t tell and he couldn’t ask without drawing suspicion to himself. It was already going to look a little  _ too _ convenient that Toni showed back up just a day after he returned to base. 

“She’s gone.” Howard said grimly. 

Not dead.  _ Gone. _ So maybe she had escaped and Howard was covering for her. Though why Howard would do that, he had no idea. From the conversation they’d had in the ravine, she wasn’t exactly a Howard Stark fan.

He startled slightly as Steve clapped him on the shoulder, squeezing tightly. “You okay?” Steve asked quietly, with probably all of the sympathy he could manage to scrape together for a woman that he was probably grateful was dead. 

“I’m fine.” He grumbled. 

He wasn’t going to grieve. Toni wasn’t in the building; they wouldn’t find her body. Howard was in on it somehow, but he wasn’t going to ask because he didn’t want to risk the brass trying to hunt her down again. And besides . . . they had already said their goodbyes. 

Steve gave him a strange, probing look, but Bucky just smiled sadly in response. 

It was only a matter of days after that when intel got back to them about the location of Schmidt. And it was only hours after that, that he found himself on a plane ladened with bombs destined for America, with two super soldiers and some kind of glowing cube. 

And then there was only one super soldier and no glowing cube, but still a ton of bombs and no way to redirect the plane or land safely. He looked to Steve, hoping that he had a better idea than the one that had popped into Bucky’s head. But from the look on Steve’s face, there was no such luck. 

_ Don’t waste your life. _

That was Toni’s only wish for him and he couldn’t even make it a week. But then again, it wasn’t really a waste, was it? Not if he and Steve saved all of those people that the bombs were going to kill. Not if he made sure that Toni still had a home to go back to.

He nodded slowly to Steve. Neither of them needed to say it. They both knew what was at stake and what needed to be done. 

Steve reached for the coms to inform command of their situation and, Jesus fuck, that was Agent Carter. Why the hell was she on the coms? This was going to wreck them both. She shouldn’t have to listen to Steve die. 

He panicked and thought about taking over the coms, at least to spare her of that trauma, but Steve was resolute and calm as he set the plane into a nosedive. Bucky gripped the chair in front of him tightly to keep himself from being splayed across the console. 

He had only a handful of moments left to live, and he spent them thinking about his mom and Becca. And most especially about Toni, the woman who had stolen his heart. He thought about the night they first met, about the confident set of her shoulders and tilt of her chin and those blood red lips that he hadn’t been able to drag his eyes away from. He thought about the warmth in her amber eyes when she’d gifted him with her vulnerability. He thought about the smooth way she moved in a fight and the scarlet gleam of her armour and the way that she never backed down from a challenge. 

There was a violent impact that slammed him against the front console, blooming white, hot agony in every inch of his body. And then it was cold. Everything was so cold. It crept into him, seeping through his veins and slowing everything to a shivering crawl. His last thought was a memory of something Toni had said. 

_ Trust me, freezing to death isn’t a great way to go. _

Well, he agreed with that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Subscribe to the series to get updates about the sequel. It's much longer, but I want to have a bit slower update schedule, since I'm still writing it and sometimes go back to change things or add details to early chapters.


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